Playing The Smoke-Filled Room: GOP edition

Let us play a game. We will call it The Smoke-Filled Room.

Here is the set-up: No candidate has a majority of delegates coming into the convention. We are all grizzled machine politicians gathered in a smoke-filled room to broker the convention by coming up with a winning slate. (Neither our own preferences nor the good of the country come into the game, just winning.) We propose alternatives, discuss their strengths and weaknesses, argue with each other, and see if we can come to a consensus.

Today we play the Republican edition. Tomorrow we will pretend to be Democrats. I’ll go first:

All right, I think our evil cabal is all here. Mr. Burns, Krusty, come on into the hotel room. Karl, do you have a light for my seegar? Where are the Halliburton and Exxon representatives? They have to approve everything we do, you know. Let’s get started. . .

McCain and Huckabee would be good together, but that would leave out a big part of our base: conservatives.

How about Huckabee and Romney? Or should it be Romney and Huckabee? Or would that be seen as the weird religion ticket?

We could do Thompson and Giuliani–the Law and Order ticket! C’mon, help me out here. . .