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Steve Kornacki, Salon: Matt Drudge, Romney favor-doer (Condi red herring)
Friday, Jul 13, 2012 08:15 AM PDT
Matt Drudge, Romney favor-doer
The two ways of understanding his big Condoleezza Rice scoop
By Steve Kornacki
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/13/matt_drudge_romney_favor_doer/
There are two ways to look at Matt Drudge’s big scoop last night that Condoleezza Rice “is now near the top of the list” of Mitt Romney’s running-mate choices.
Option No. 1: Romney, a risk-averse one-time cultural liberal who faces profound distrust from his own party’s conservative base (especially evangelical Christians, who continued to reject him during the primaries even when it became clear that he’d be the nominee), is prepared to ask Republican convention delegates to ratify an unmarried pro-choice woman who describes herself as “generally pretty libertarian” on cultural issues and whose foreign policy record from the Bush years would provide Democrats with an endless line of attacks as the party’s candidate for vice president.
Option No. 2: The Matt Rhoades/Drudge axis has struck again.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say No. 2 is the more plausible interpretation. As others have already noted, the timing of Drudge’s exclusive is its most striking feature. It’s been rough going for the Romney campaign recently, and things took a pretty dramatic turn for the worse yesterday morning, when the Boston Globe documented that Romney remained the president, CEO, chairman and sole shareholder of Bain Capital for three years after the date he claims to have left the company. So what better way to distract the political world than with a juicy bit of (supposed) Veepstakes news? And what better way to get that news out than through Drudge?
Matt Drudge, Romney favor-doer
The two ways of understanding his big Condoleezza Rice scoop
By Steve Kornacki
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/13/matt_drudge_romney_favor_doer/
There are two ways to look at Matt Drudge’s big scoop last night that Condoleezza Rice “is now near the top of the list” of Mitt Romney’s running-mate choices.
Option No. 1: Romney, a risk-averse one-time cultural liberal who faces profound distrust from his own party’s conservative base (especially evangelical Christians, who continued to reject him during the primaries even when it became clear that he’d be the nominee), is prepared to ask Republican convention delegates to ratify an unmarried pro-choice woman who describes herself as “generally pretty libertarian” on cultural issues and whose foreign policy record from the Bush years would provide Democrats with an endless line of attacks as the party’s candidate for vice president.
Option No. 2: The Matt Rhoades/Drudge axis has struck again.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say No. 2 is the more plausible interpretation. As others have already noted, the timing of Drudge’s exclusive is its most striking feature. It’s been rough going for the Romney campaign recently, and things took a pretty dramatic turn for the worse yesterday morning, when the Boston Globe documented that Romney remained the president, CEO, chairman and sole shareholder of Bain Capital for three years after the date he claims to have left the company. So what better way to distract the political world than with a juicy bit of (supposed) Veepstakes news? And what better way to get that news out than through Drudge?
