GOP luminaries squirm when asked about Sarah Palin's qualifications

From the LA Times blog:

So, then came the follow-up question: Would you have been comfortable with Palin serving as president?

After an enormously pregnant but pro-life pause, [former eBay CEO Meg Whitman] responded that Palin was a “very fast study, incredibly enthusiastic.”

[Gov. Jon Huntsman of Utah]: “I don’t think it’s a simple yes or no.”

[Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty], who'd been mentioned as a prime VP pick himself, said it was McCain’s decision. “So in his judgment, she met that criteria and he felt strongly about that and we’re going to have to defer to his judgment and that process.”

See if you can follow this. Pawlenty ended with this:

“I think everybody will be looking back and second-guessing, triple-guessing this stuff for months and years… A lot of this is just like post-modern art. You can look at the painting and different people look at it and see different things…

"What you have to look to in the end is the data, an objective measurement of it. And so, politics as post-modern art analysis is fun and interesting but it doesn’t get you very far. So I would just steer you to the data.”

The data? You mean, like the Electoral College?

There, the tentative numbers right now are McCain-Palin 173, Brand X 365.

Or how about the popular vote? McC-P 58 million, Others 66.1 million.