Some see the fact that Rice worked for Bush for eight years as a problem. | Reuters, AP Blogs: The Rice idea is half-cooked

Conservative bloggers are expressing deep skepticism about the possibility of Condoleezza Rice as Mitt Romney’s running mate — both as to the validity of the reports she’s high on the list and her qualifications for the No. 2 spot.

“I don’t know who is hitting the crack rock tonight in the rumor mill, but bull shiitake mushrooms,” RedState’s Erick Erickson wrote. “Condelizza Rice is pro-abortion. She worked for George Bush for eight years.”


Erickson’s reasons for disbelief are widely shared: Right-leaning bloggers think her support for abortion rights makes her an anathema to the GOP base, and her time working for the Bush administration makes her unacceptable to independents, one of the key voting groups.

“Problem one: Bush, Bush, Bush. As I’ve said before, Jeb Bush can’t run for president because he’s related to Dubya but Dubya’s handpicked NSA-turned-Secretary-of-State is A-OK as number two?,” HotAir’s pseudonymous AllahPundit wrote. “Why not double down and promise that Hank Paulson will be back at Treasury if Mitt wins? ”

There’s also a general sense in the blogosphere that Rice would bring liabilities to the ticket without delivering any new voters.

“Rice’s views on abortion (she has said that she is ‘mildly pro-choice’) and her years in the Bush administration seem likely to generate controversy, while I’m not seeing any group of voters that she would automatically attract,” National Review’s Katrina Trinko wrote.

“Not only will Romney be defending Bain up through the election, now he’s going to have to be defending Bush and Bush’s policies right up through the election,” conservative talker Mark Levin said last night on his radio show, adding that he meant no offense to Rice.

“Romney has spent the last year running away from George Bush,” Rick Moran writes for The American Thinker. “Why would he pick someone so closely associated with the former president?”

Some conservatives also directly attacked Rice’s main qualification: her time as secretary of state. The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison, a libertarian on foreign policy issues, was scathing.

“Rice did a lousy job as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State, and she has the unusual distinction of being distrusted and disliked by many neoconservatives, most realists, and all non-interventionists in almost equal measure,” he wrote earlier this week.

“She is closely associated with an administration that was widely regarded as incompetent in the conduct of foreign policy, and she helped to craft one of the least successful foreign policy records of any postwar administration. Those are her qualifications in the area in which she is considered an expert. On everything else, her policy views are either out of step with the majority of her party or unknown.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens concurred in a piece written in April, but re-posted to the front page of the Journal’s website today.

“By her own admission, she flubbed the handling of the notorious 16 words on Iraq’s WMD, giving life to the narrative that Mr. Bush lied about the intelligence,” Stephens wrote. “She hired Flynt Leverett for a top job at NSC; he’s since gone on to become the Beltway’s go-to apologist for Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. She arranged a premature ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon that allowed Hezbollah to declare victory. She opposed a U.S. attack on the nuclear reactor North Korea had built in Syria, leaving Israel to do the job.”

At Commentary, which is generally associated with a neoconservative foreign policy outlook, Michael Rubin accused Rice of disloyalty during the Bush administration.

”She appointed a number of officials … [who worked] against the Bush agenda both privately and then publicly, often directly on behalf of [2004 Democratic nominee John] Kerry,” Rubin writes. He concludes: “Her track record of management, while at the National Security Council, and her policy decisions while secretary of state are both topics which she has never adequately addressed.”

Four of the biggest names in conservative media have separately floated Rice as vice presidential possibility over the past two weeks, with each one praising her. A week ago, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol hyped her as “qualified” and “poised.” Rush Limbaugh compared her favorably to Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday, and Matt Drudge reported everyone at a recent Romney donor retreat “left with her name on their lips.” Noonan was the most effusive. Rice is “a public figure of obvious and nameable accomplishment whose attainments can’t be taken away from her,” according to the former Ronald Reagan speechwriter.

But Drudge, as the American Spectator’s John Tabin points out, has a terrible vice presidential prediction record: “Four years ago, Matt Drudge reported that Barack Obama was likely to select Evan Bayh as his running mate. Eight years ago, Drudge reported that John Kerry was likely to select Hillary Clinton as his running mate. Twelve years ago, Drudge reported that George W. Bush’s likely pick was Frank Keating.”

And Limbaugh isn’t enthusiastic about Rice either.

“If I may be blunt, I don’t care who the veep is,” Limbaugh said on his radio show Friday. “It’s all about Obama to me.”

The last GOP vice presidential nominee, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, said Rice would be a “wonderful” running mate during an appearance Thursday night on “On The Record with Greta Van Susteren.” Palin wasn’t concerned about Rice’s support for abortion rights, since most decisions on the issue would be left up to the president and Congress.

In the end, any anxious conservatives got their nerves calmed by one of their own.

“Top Romney source tells me ‘no Condi.’ More: Romney wants someone more comfortable in ‘attack dog’ mode,” the National Review’s Robert Costa wrote on Twitter. “I hear a few UT retreat attendees (donors, etc.) are stirring Condi buzz. Per people I trust, it’s not Boston-driven.”

While conservative bloggers didn’t love the idea of Rice as vice president, they praised the Romney campaign — if it was the Romney campaign — for successfully changing the subject after a day in which he was accused of lying about when he left Bain Capital.

“If this is Team Mitt trying to change the subject … good for them,” Drew M. wrote on Ace of Spades. “Maybe they can get the media chasing squirrels for a while.”

Appearing on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” Democratic strategist James Carville backed this theory.

“This is like being a birther,” Carville said. “I mean, it’s the most ridiculous thing in the world. Romney’s getting hammered all day because of Bain, so then the Romney campaign calls Drudge and says, ‘We’re gonna change the issue. We’re gonna put Condi Rice up for vice president.’ It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.”