Liberal Talk Radio

Apropos of nothing — except maybe stuff like this or this — I think there is a plausible scenario in which a third-party or independent candidate could possibly win the 2008 Presidential election, but it has to go down like this:

• Mitt Romney as Republican candidate would be attractive to conservatives and moderates but his Mormonism is too weird for a significant enough chunk of the center.
• Hillary Clinton as Democratic candidate would be attractive to, well, Democrats but her Clinton past and her cold personality turn off a significant enough chunk of the mass of people who are persuadable either way.
• John McCain-Rudy Giuliani or John McCain-Michael Bloomberg picks up the 19 percent of voters who actually voted for Perot in 1992 plus all of the folks who are weirded out by both Clinton and Romney plus a bunch of people who actually like these guys.

Anything less and it won’t happen.

Big caveat: McCain seems pretty loyal, and even if some of his recent behavior is inscrutable, ditching the Republican party seems out of character.

Caveat #2: Both Bloomberg and Giuliani are at about Hillary levels of suckitude on a national stage — in terms of warm and fuzziness, they are nowhere near John Edwards, much less Bill Clinton or George Bush — so they might not be such winning VP candidates, if that matters. It probably doesn’t.

Also, I can’t believe I’m thinking about this in June of 2006. That’s very lame.

(Bruno, from the assignment desk: Please evaluate over the weekend. I’ll expect to hear back on Monday.)