The big “story” making the rounds this morning is the Drudge Report’s claim that Condoleezza Rice has emerged as the front-runner for the GOP vice presidential nomination. Matt Drudge, you see, has a “special relationship” with the Romney campaign, which is another way of saying he was strongly suspected of shilling for the candidate during the most intense phase of the primary campaign.
Conservative activists are predictably unhappy with the report and all seem to be checking with their own Romney campaign contacts to make sure Drudge doesn’t know what he’s talking about (and/or is trying to help Romney distract attention from the Bain obsession of the last week or so). Erick Erickson even suggests it could be a trial balloon calculated to so upset the Right that if Romney picks someone they dislike slightly less, they’ll be relieved.
Now some of the conservative naysayers are claiming Rice is a bad idea because she’ll remind everybody every day of George W. Bush, but I think it’s all about abortion. Rice has called herself pro-choice in the past, and with one “convert” to the anti-choice cause at the top of the ticket, the RTL crowd is not about to accept a second on the ticket, even if she does “flip” to the acceptable position. And as they proved in 2008 when they kept the notoriously stubborn John McCain from choosing a pro-choice running mate and then secured their poster girl Sarah Palin instead, they are not to be trifled with in the Republican Party.
So it ain’t happening, which leaves the two possibilities that Drudge is just looking for traffic or has something else up his sleeve, and maybe so does Mitt.
