Romney campaign distracts entire Internet with VP rumor

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Last night, as the Washington Post Fact Checker was, no doubt, preparing it’s impressively huffy takedown of the Obama campaign’s Bain-or-felony story from yesterday (turns out the Boston Globe, who “broke” the story, wrote an entire f***ing book on Mitt Romney’s Olympic years which explicitly contradicted their own claims), and Ben LaBolt’s team was furiously researching the difference between corporate ownership and corporate management, after having drawn only on their expertise running fair trade coffee shops in Portland to explain their earlier conclusions, Mitt Romney’s team was hard at work taking the Internet for a long walk down a short pier.

Despite having denied she was being vetted just weeks ago, apparently Condoleezza Rice had risen to the top of Romney’s VP shortlist, partly because she gave a devastatingly fantastic speech in Utah just days before, and partly because the Internet really needed to stop f***ing talking about Bain Capital for one godforsaken minute.

LOOK! SOMETHING SHINY!

Late Thursday evening, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign launched a new fundraising drive, ‘Meet The VP’ — just as Romney himself has narrowed the field of candidates to a handful, sources reveal.

And a surprise name is now near the top of the list: Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice!

The timing of the announcement is now set for ‘coming weeks’.

I’d like to believe it, but I don’t. While Condi is a strong, powerful, intelligent woman who projects confidence and has rarely been tripped up by reporters, the wounds of the Bush administration are still too fresh. If Obama’s campaign is intent on claiming that eight years of Bush left the country in such a shambles they need eight years of Mom Jeans to repair it, why campaign on bringing the Bush years back? And while social issues are unlikely to be a major priority this election (unless the Obama campaign needs a carefully-timed distraction), social conservatives are still influential enough to throw an effective temper tantrum over Rice’s moderately pro-choice views, and that’s a fight Mitt Romney can’t afford to engage in with his history.

That said, she’s not a boring old white dude, and the GOP could certainly use less boring old white dudes. Boring old white dudes are so 2004, although, while Joe Biden and Dick Cheney are both boring old white dudes, one would definitely be an excellent drinking buddy (especially if you got him wasted in a particularly ethnic neighborhood) and the other could shoot your face off.