Conservative website The Drudge Report reported Thursday night Condoleezza Rice now tops the list of candidates being considered for Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate.
The Romney campaign has not commented on the report, and according to ABC News, “Drudge has long appeared supportive of the Romney campaign and there are ties between the site’s founder, Matt Drudge, and Romney staffers.”
Rice, who was Secretary of State under President George W. Bush and is now a professor at Stanford University, is on vacation this weekend, according to her spokesperson, and has yet to comment.
Adding to the buzz, The Washington Post published an op-ed about how some conservatives view Rice favorably because she’s the “anti-Palin.” Also, conservative analyst Bill Kristol predicted that she is a front-runner, because Mitt’s wife Ann Romney told CBS that they are considering a woman vice presidential candidate.
Rice has repeatedly, steadfastly maintained that she not only doesn’t want to be VP, she doesn’t want to run for any elected office.
While she has previously endorsed Romney, Rice has not campaigned with him, like other potential vice presidential picks. She has been the featured speaker at a few fundraisers and has given rousing speeches at closed events, but she’s hardly been an attack dog against the Obama administration. Rice has focused more on why she likes Romney in interviews. Her statements of public criticism of the president have been intellectual and thoughtful, rather than emotionally-charged like other potential VP picks.
Here’s what she told Greta Van Susteren last month on Fox about President Obama:
“I think when people talk about leading from behind which is a kind of oxymoron, you’re seeing some of that,” she said. “The United States, the only thing the world hates more than unilateral American leadership is an absence of American leadership, because the international system is a system. It has certain rules, power relationships, and people respond to those. If the United States is not setting that agenda, then someone else will, and that might be a country that doesn’t believe in free markets and free peoples.”
