The Drudge Report, a right wing aggregator and extravaganza of innuendo, hype, and conservative news, recently strongly suggested Condoleezza Rice would be Mitt Romney‘s pick to be his vice presidential running mate, only today to switch that suggestion to Tim Pawlenty, saying, “HE’S MADE HIS DECISION!,” and pointing to a New York Times profile of the former Minnesota Governor that ran yesterday.
Writing, “His Condi Rice item went viral despite its utter implausibility,” Lauren Ashburn at The Daily Beast notes:
Matt Drudge—the shadowy, fedora-wearing Internet gossip machine who has boasted from day one that he is a conservative—crowed that his sources revealed former secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is at the top of the veep list. He even went so far as to punctuate the scoop with an exclamation point!
Bull. I’m a good enough poker player to know a campaign bluff when I see one. The claim is so ludicrous as to be laughable, and Drudge must know it considering his reported alliance with the Romney campaign.
Yet in typical fashion, the media—knowing the claim had little basis in reality—went along for the ride. The Today show, Good Morning America, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, even The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, along with plenty of others, took the bait and devoted countless minutes and column inches to the tale.
The speculation spread like wildfire across the web, with The Daily Beast and Politico taking the “scoop†and running with it, spicing up the summer’s otherwise ennui-inducing campaign with titillating, but meaningless catnip journalism.
“The idea that Condi Rice, an African-American conservative woman could team up with a white-guy Mormon to take on an African-American, left-leaning Democrat is just too delicious for reporters to ignore,†says Frank Sesno, director of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs and a former Washington bureau chief for CNN.
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The litany of political reasons why it wouldn’t happen is as long as the distance to the man in the moon. Rice has said she is pro-choice, may not have voted for John McCain in 2008, and her positions on gun control, immigration, education, and gay marriage don’t seem to completely jibe with the party line. Her involvement in launching the war in Iraq and high-profile role under George W. Bush would muddy the Romney camp’s main message on the economy. That’s a whole lotta differences that could derail Romney’s chances.
Screenshot of Drudge Report taken 10:56 AM