RICE FOR PRESIDENT?….Eleanor Clift finally says the obvious about the possibility of Condi Rice running for president in 2008:
Condeleezza Rice says she is ?mildly pro-choice,? a position that dooms her candidacy for president in the Republican Party….Rice can flirt with running, but unless she?s prepared to do what the senior George Bush did and become a pro-life convert, she?s flirting with ghosts. While senators and governors can cut and paste their position according to political need, the presidency is different.
We all remember what happened to Colin Powell in 1996, don’t we? He was an even more perfect candidate than Rice, but the social conservative base of the Republican party made it crystal clear that they would fight his candidacy tooth and nail because of his soft pro-choice views. After a short bit of statesmanlike soul searching, Powell wisely announced that the presidency was “a calling that I do not yet hear” and that was that.
Rice would face exactly the same fate as Powell, and without the active support of social conservatives no one can win the modern day Republican nomination. It’s a fantasy to think that Rice could buck this.
