Ezra at Pandagon worries that this bit of gossip from MSNBC's Jeannette Walls might be true:

A well-placed source says that the president will "most likely" drop Dick Cheney from his re-election ticket and his first choice for a replacement is former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.

I don't like going out on limbs, but I think this is impossible. It isn't just that Giuliani is pro-gun control, or pro-choice, or pro-gay rights -- the dealbreaker, I think, is that he signed New York City's domestic partnership bill into law. What could be more infuriating to Bush's base, more likely to keep them home on Election Day?

I can think of a lot of other reasons this won't happen -- Rudy's too much of an egomaniac to want to be a second banana for four years; criticism makes Bush dig in his heels, so (like his father) he won't drop a VP who's a potential liability; Jeb probably is the Bush family's choice for the '08 nomination, and a Cheney vice presidency doesn't harm Jeb's chances (though wouldn't it be a kick in the collective Bush pants if Cheney suddenly decides that he's not to sickly to head the ticket in '08?).

Don't give this another thought -- New York insiders regularly declare that local pols are on the verge of going national. (Funny how that Bush-Pataki ticket The New York Observer promised us in '00 never quite happened.) Jeannette Walls is a gossip columnist; her expertise is the entertainment world. She doesn't know that whoever told her this was blowing smoke.