John McCain has invited three possible running mates to his ranch in Page Springs, near the resort town of Sedona, Arizona, for a weekend visit. The three prospective veeps are Florida’s perpetually tanned, bachelor governor, Charlie Crist; former presisdential candidate, Mitt Romney; and Louisiana’s new governor, Bobby Jindal.
Jindal’s family immigrated from India, and he is brown-skinned. Putting him on the ticket might confuse the GOP’s racist base, who tend to view anyone with dark skin with suspicion. (This could be another ding against Crist, come to think of it.)
• Crist is popular enough in Florida to make a difference in a tight race this fall, but at least one GOP operative has insisted that Charlie must get married, but quick, lest yahoos in the GOP base think he is gay.

• Romney proved himself to be so inauthentic during his self-financed run against McCain last winter that it is hard to imagine why McCain would seriously consider him. Perhaps he’s on the list because, if McCain was chosen because he was the least-bad candidate, Romney was second least-worst.

• Jindal is a wild card. He was a congressman before running for governor, and is well-known in Louisiana but not elsewhere, which means introducing him to the country would eat up campaign time and resources. Compounding this is his ethnicity. McCain can’t run on the success of the Iraq occupation or the Bush economy, and he’s even been botching his purported strong suit, foreign relations and security, lately. That means the best — maybe only — thing the McCain campaign has going for it is the fact that his opponent, Barack Obama is African-American, a factor that will energize the GOP racist base. Jindal’s family immigrated from India, and he is brown-skinned. Putting him on the ticket might confuse those core voters, who tend to view anyone with dark skin with suspicion. (Another possible ding against Crist.)

In any case, McCain adviser Charlie Black denies that the weekend at the ranch is going to be anything but a fun sleepover for grown-ups. It will be “purely social,” he insists, and has “nothing whatsoever to do with the vice presidential selection process … Wouldn’t it be difficult to interview people for vice president with the other competitors there?”

McCain’s wife Cindy is worth $100 million, we’re told, and, not surprisingly, the setting of the McCains’ vacation home sounds pretty nice:

[The] 6.6 acre ranch is located about 13 miles west of Sedona. It is in a small town called Page [sic] Arizona. It is the best-kept secret in the Verde Valley.The town is bordered by 2000 acres of National Forest and is located between Sedona and Cottonwood, on the banks of Oak Creek it is located at 3,400 feet in a quaint setting of giant oak trees, sycamores, old cottonwood trees and artesian streams.The Oak Creek has created a migratory corridor for more than 500 species of birds traveling from Canada to South America – a bird watcher’s paradise…

The area has many points of interest, parks and monuments to offer travelers full days of activities and fun. Page boasts several wineries. Javelina Leap Vineyard & Winery, Oak Springs Winery, Page Springs and Echo Canyon Vineyard and Winery.

Sedona is also a world-famous spiritual center — but this is a different kind of spiritualism for the fire-and-brimstone, apocalyptic religiosity promoted by McCain’s BFF John Hagee:

Downtown Sedona, meanwhile, is a hotbed for seekers, spiritual healers, Reiki masters and people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. There are places to get your “aura” photographed … and jeep tours that take you up to the red rocks to experience the so-called vortexes. The local paper recently printed a letter to the editor warning of “a day when this physical plane trembles before the coming Quantum Leap of the cosmos.”

In 1987, pilgrims gathered here for what was supposed to be a “harmonic convergence,” though whether something actually converged and how that affected the universe is a matter of some dispute.

In any case, Sedona is not a place for straight talk and [McCain's barbecued] ribs. Sedona is a place where everything is invested with a sense of the spiritual. Heck, folks here even see politics in spiritual terms.

“People are hungry and starved for love,” said a 67-year-old ponytailed man who goes by the name Rama, which he said was given to him when he studied with gurus in India. Rama was selling tickets Saturday afternoon in a booth off the main drag for Earth Wisdom Jeep Tours, which takes tourists to see something called the “sacred wheel.” He predicted that Barack Obama might be the answer to the nation’s hunger.

Not so, said another Sedona resident, a psychic and “spiritualist minister” named Carrie Konyha, 40. McCain is the man. McCain believes in his own “inner knowing,” Konyha said, and she might vote for him if she were in the habit of voting.

If McCain is elected, the ranch would likely serve as his “western White House.” This would make him even more popular with reporters, or so this Fox News correspondent suggested after a recent visit:

The press on hand was in almost unanimous agreement that a potential Southwestern White House based in Sedona beats the current Crawford, TX location — given that the McCain home is a few miles from a number of top resorts and spas, including the world-renowned Enchantment.

Barack Obama does not own a ranch, so would probably spend downtime in his home in Chicago. Reporters will undoubtedly take the second-home issue — moving the gaggle to Sedona or Chicago at, say, Christmastime — into consideration when they decide which candidate they will grow to loathe in the fall.