HORNDOG VETTER IDENTIFIED

John McCaslin at Human Events says he knows how John McCain wound up running with Sarah Palin:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin can thank Washington lobbyist and political consultant Rick Davis, chief executive officer of John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, for being the ultimate pick to become the Republican vice presidential candidate.

"It was all his doing. He was completely snowed by Palin," a source close to Mr. McCain confided to this columnist over the weekend. "He was totally taken by her."

Um, I think we knew that back in October, as I noted at the time in response to Robert Draper's New York Times Magazine article about the McCain campaign, which included this passage:

After [a] first brief meeting, Davis remained in discreet but frequent contact with Palin and her staff -- gathering tapes of speeches and interviews, as he was doing with all potential vice-presidential candidates. One tape in particular struck Davis as arresting: an interview ... on "The Charlie Rose Show" ... What [Davis] liked was how she stuck to her pet issues -- energy independence and ethics reform -- and thereby refused to let Rose manage the interview. This was the case throughout all of the Palin footage. Consistency. Confidence. And ... well, look at her.

That breathless "well, look at her" isn't a direct quote, but I assume it's an accurate paraphrase ... of, um, an embarrassingly serious love jones (or lust jones, at least).

Admittedly, what follows in the Draper story suggests a bit less fevered interpretation of that passage:

A friend had said to Davis: "The way you pick a vice president is, you get a frame of Time magazine, and you put the pictures of the people in that frame. You look at who fits that frame best -- that’s your V. P."

To Davis, that was Palin? He had it bad.