Dan Riehl downplays the importance of a running mate:

...Veeps don't win states, the top candidates do. It may help garner more press in a state, or two. But when people walk into the booth, I'm unconvinced the name in the VP slot makes much difference at all. Where they matter is in getting out on the stump and doing a good job of selling number one, while chewing off the ankles of the opponent. Is Pawlenty the guy for that in this case? I have no idea.

I think that's true of McCain picks your garden variety running mate like Pawlenty or Sarah Palin. These are not Dick Cheney picks and can reasonably be expected to have no real impact on the direction and philosophy of the administration.

Mitt Romney on the other hand, isn't garden variety. He's Catherine of Aragorn.

For those of you a little hazy on British history, Catherine of Aragorn was a Spanish princess married to Arthur, the Prince of Wales and heir to the throne of Henry VII. When Arthur died suddenly, Catherine was married to Arthur's younger brother Henry, who of course succeeded to the throne as the infamous Henry VIII. Henry didn't fancy his sister-in-law because of her exotic looks, but because she represented an important alliance--one important enough to maintain through the awkward spectacle of marrying brothers.

Lets be candid-shall we? McCain is no conservative and all his protestations of being a Reagan foot-soldier aren't going to make him a conservative. He is a lessor-of-two-evils pick and as such, as rendered himself largely irrelevant in the dynamics of the presidential race. Its not a race between Obama and McCain, its a referendum on whether Obama is an acceptable choice for the presidency.

The New York Times decision and rationale not to print the McCain editorial was perfectly illustrative--they wanted counter-point because that's McCain's role in this election.

This isn't just left-wing posturing--many conservative pundits would admit as much, and some have. Listening to Foxtalk radio on Sirious late last week as I snapped pictures of Bison butts in Yellowstone, John Gibson was crystal clear on this point.

McCain needs Romney to change that dynamic, to make it a genuine contest between two choices.

How he does that is largely a subrosa affair--McCain will continue to call the tune, but conservatives, many who like me are enthusiastic supporters of Romney, will suddenly find themselves rooting for McCain-Romney in a way we just can't muster at this point, and couldn't for McCain-Pawlenty or McCain-Palin or McCain-Ridge.

What Romney brings is both unique and synergistic. Even the left concedes that McCain's compaign has been buoyed into parity by what the left calls "biography" for fear of calling it what is really is--credibility. Yet ultimately this isn't a foreign policy race and that's where Romney comes in--a guy who can articulate the economic policy the way McCain can talk about Iraq. Its the hammer blow on the wedge that divides the electorate from the boy-band appeal of barack-o-bama.

Its also the future of the Republican party. While twits-with-forums pontificate on the death of conservatism, the reality is that conservativism is doing just fine, what is sickly and pale is the Republican party who have shown themselves to be no more principled or competent than their Democrat mafioso counterparts. That's only going to change with new blood, and a successful Romney political career is going to make competence and experience a valuable political commodity again. Instead of attracting the garden variety opportunists, the party could actually run candidates with real leadership credentials--people who have attained their success by producing value instead of illusions.

The stakes are soberingly high. If Obama actually wins this election, he will herald a new American fascism. The Sun-king will have prevailed and the American experiment ended. We will return to the classic political paradigm of 18th and 19th century Europe where the public is mesmerized by the ritual of high-church while the Cardinal Richelieus conduct the affairs of state away from the prying eyes of the public.

God forbid.