Over at Power Line, Joel Mowbray reports on the possibility that Eric Cantor, the House’s minority whip and its only Jewish GOP member, could end up as John McCain’s running mate:
With the speculation machine at full tilt this week that McCain may soon announce his running mate, one name not commonly bandied about deserves at least a closer look: Rep. Eric Cantor.
The Virginia Republican is a stalwart conservative, and he happens to be the only Jewish GOP member in the U.S. House. Working in his favor, he’s got a smooth delivery and a soft, but distinct Southern accent. With boyish good looks and the requisite attractive family, he exudes wholesomeness. Not to be discounted, either, is that he is quite close to McCain personally. At a mega-dollar fundraiser in the posh Hamptons this past weekend, for example, Cantor was one of the few “friends” who didn’t buy his way in.
Plenty of insiders see Cantor as one of the best faces in the GOP. In a recent National Journal anonymous poll of three dozen Republican congressmen and senators, Cantor received the second-highest number of votes – behind only Mitt Romney – for whom they would like as McCain’s veep pick. When Bush spoke in Israel this May, the influential Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention told several members of the American delegation that he would like to see Cantor as vice president.
Check out the National Journal poll and the independent EricCantorforVP site.
For what it’s worth, in an earlier interview with JTA,Cantor dismissed the vice-president speculation surrounding him as “ridiculous.”
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