to pick a more conservative v.p. any logic to that? well, we hear that. and, you know, honestly, gretchen, we hear it every four years because there s always a split in the republican party, there s always a split in the democratic party and people play these games and i m as guilty as anybody else. but in the end, it will it will be mitt romney s judgment. he is singularly responsible for this decision. we ll be held accountable for it. ok. very interesting. dr. larry sabato, see you again very soon. thanks so much. thanks, gretchen. coming up on fox & friends , no desire to have kids? are you missing a maternal gene? dr. keith ablow will rule if that s normal or not. but first on this day in 1974, elton john had the number one song with benny and the jets. sing it. wake up!
look for in picking a v.p.? this is not necessarily conventional wisdom but gretchen, i m convinced having studied the vice presidential selection over many, many cycles that a presidential nominee is best off when he ignores all other factors and picks a person who is clearly, clearly qualified to step into the presidency on day one. wow! that s what most americans want to see. now, it s wonderful if you get a packet of electoral votes along with that. right. it s wonderful if you get new appeals to a certain demographic groups that a candidate may have to attract to win the presidency. that s great. but you can t forget the fundamental of picking somebody who is qualified to be president. yeah. very interesting. one heartbeat away from that top job. before you go, real quickly answer this for me. is it any different this year around because there appears to be this split in the republican party. if romney is the nominee, he has
we re probably watching it live now on the fox newschannel yesterday after a long night on monday night, rick santorum there in gettysburg, pennsylvania, decided that he was going to suspend his campaign. apparently, he realized, you know, texas was not going to be a winner take all state. newt gingrich not getting out of things. his daughter ill. he decided that it was time to call it quits. and some aides told abc it had nothing to do with the fact that there s a potential that mitt romney wins his home state. he said look, you know what? he has lost that state before. a loss again would not devastate him. it was interesting timing because the primary in pennsylvania, his home state is not until april 24th. so, you know, you re looking at two weeks away, maybe he just felt like the pressure would continue to mount and the polls would continue to show he was maybe going to be slipping and the pundits would continue to say hey, if he loses his home state, it s really all over. i thin
him to try to convince him? was it just his family? maybe so. or maybe there s some sort of a back room deal going on. let me play devil s advocate and let me say that rick santorum did the right thing for the g.o.p. and he got out before, you know, mitt romney or the who will probably be the presumptive nominee, before he spends too much money and we ve heard about a $2.9 million ad buy he has to make for pennsylvania. he may be able to get some of that back, i m reading, but why not? if it s going to be mitt romney, why not get out now and a big winner here. behind the one that s going to be president obama. i find the timing interested. in the last 10 days or so, rick santorum seemed to be energized and seems to have an extra bounce in his step. maybe things changed over the last 10 days. santorum had a big gap over romney and it was starting it was growing. yeah, it was in the gap in pennsylvania and, you know, that if you re going to spend money, you want
i guess i d parse it out this way which is to say that obama has a winning personality and he needs a message and romney has a winning message and he needs a personality. and i guess it s game on with santorum getting out yesterday as to the beginning of that tug of war on who wins. there s clearly an empathy gap. i mean, obama seems to win on that front understanding or at least being perceived to understand more one s hopes and dreams and romney has the message but it s a tug of war and it s going to be a long contest between here and november as that tug of war takes place on who which side wins. it s interesting to me, governor, because it seems as if when you re talking specifically about the economy, that both of these candidates have divergent points of view. it s interesting that a swing voter could still be undecided on that. don t you see them as totally opposites, obama, romney, on how they would handle the economy. yeah, but, you know, i think you got to look at whe