Matt Drudge has a long history of floating trial balloons for the Romney campaign and I think we need to take this one seriously. At minimum, I believe this indicates an effort by either Romney or Drudge or a faction of Romney's campaign to test the waters to see how conservative Republicans, establishment Republicans, and Democrats will react. Romney has already reached out to RedState and other anti-Romney conservatives on the web, and this thread may well be monitored by the Romney campaign for an idea of how anti-Romney Republicans are thinking.
So here's my take, for whatever it's worth.
The sad thing is Condoleeza Rice, despite all her problems, may well be better than other people to whom Romney is likely to give serious consideration. We could do a lot worse, and probably will if Rice means what she says about refusing a VP post.
Rice is far from my first choice for the VP slot, but I could live with Rice as a vice-president if the person at the top of the ticket were a strong conservative on social issues who didn't have much foreign policy or national defense experience, and if it were clear to everyone that Rice was being picked to “balance the ticket” socially with a person who has fairly conservative national security and foreign policy credentials.
I believe Rice could have been a good (or at least a tolerable) VP pick for lots of Republicans who ran for president this year. Let's give credit where credit is due — she does provide foreign policy and national security experience on the ticket, experience which Romney does not have in his background as governor and as a businessman.
What I don't see is how adding Rice to the ticket does anything to help Romney attract liberal or moderate votes, or solve his problem with conservatives who don't trust him.
So why do this?
I see two possibilities.
First, Romney may be trying a divide-and-conquer strategy between social-issues conservatives who don't trust Romney and national defense conservatives who don't trust Romney. That could work to some extent.
Second, maybe Romney is preparing a pre-emptive strike in case Obama replaces Biden with Hillary Clinton as his VP. That's the only other political rationale I can see for this trial balloon being floated.
I do not want to see a Condoleeza Rice-Hillary Clinton race in 2016. I fear that will happen if Rice is the Republican nominee for VP this year. Four years from now I could live with Rice as a complement to a Republican presidential candidate who is a strong social issues conservative — but as Romney's VP, I think she's not going to help him very much.
Somebody show me where I'm wrong.