For the longest time I thought only a few friends and a certain dog owner bothered to read this blog. Now I’m thinking the shot-callers of the Republican National Convention may be stopping through here as well, looking for guidance from a guy who writes comic books.

Over the weekend, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attended one of the regular weekly meetings of Americans for Tax Reform, a salon of prominent conservative figures that has never enjoyed the company of a secretary of state before. Absent also from the news are the frequent and ardent denials by Rice that she is in any way interested in the GOP veep nomination.

I’m reasonably sure this is all shill, Rice perhaps doing her mentor George W. a favor by making some noise for John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. I regard a McCain-Rice ticket as highly unlikely and the speculation about it all—no doubt orchestrated by the campaign—as smarmy and manipulative, with a huge potential to backfire on the Republicans.

Rice is obviously being used for her major assets—her gender and her race—in an effort to steal some of the thunder (now devolving into boredom) from the Democratic contest. But, those attributes notwithstanding, Rice brings little to the table that a presidential candidate might actually value. She would be of little help to McCain in states with high African American populations, like Rice’s home state of Alabama, as Rice’s negatives (the war, her loyalty to the president) make her a figure of some controversy among many blacks. While her civil rights and academic resumes are impeccable, her service record to this president and, most especially, support of this war are huge negatives for McCain.

I’m fairly certain Rice is just being dangled out there. A McCain-Rice ticket might be the GOP (or Bizarro World) version of the Dream Team, but I doubt McCain’s temperament makes Rice a suitable partner. I also think both versions of the so-called dream team—McCain/Rice or Hillary/Obama—are particularly dreamy. Both versions are unbalanced and cater to the sensational over the practical. Both Hillary and Obama need a southern white guy with unimpeachable credentials to balance their tickets. McCain needs a southern conservative with charisma and a strong pulse, as McCain’s health issues will doubtless become a major campaign issue. If Mike Huckabee wasn’t so obviously the GOP version of Jimmy Carter, he’d be the obvious choice. McCain needs to link up with precisely the kind of hard-right Republican he personally despises (McCain himself is, despite his claims, more of a centrist than a conservative).

Without some tabackie-chomping redneck at his side, I’m fairly certain the GOP faithful will stay home in November and whoever’s left standing in the Democrats’ sandbox will be sworn in—most likely without the other major candidate as the veep. Holding out hope of a Hillary/Obama or, even less likely, Obama/Hillary ticket is just playing to the orchestra. Condi as running mate is just the party trying to manipulate genuine hopes of some magical, earthshaking change in our political system, when holding out that very hope is, in fact, politics as usual.

Rice is a Presbyterian, which suggests she is a Christian but perhaps one of the Frozen Chosen: a Christian who is not likely to excite fundamentalist Christians or move them to the polls. Her views on major Christian issues like abortion rights and gay marriage are unknown as she has, heretofore, represented the views of her masters—not necessarily her own. The few times she has spoken in her own voice, she has, however, spoken forcefully and defended herself impressively on issues like civil rights and the war. She’s very, very smart and, I suspect, much tougher than most of us know.

I’ve always believed the modern-era Republican party exists mainly to play the Christian Right for idiots, exploiting them with spurious promises of reversing Roe v. Wade and ending stem cell research and putting prayer back in school: promises they make every, I mean every, election, and promises they’ve yet to keep. In a free republic, these are, for the most part, unrealistic promises told capriciously by professional liars and consumed by religious leaders and pastors—many of whom also fit that description—and foisted upon the Christian faithful, many of whom revere their pastors more than they honor their actual God and believe everything the man tells them. Like robots, or more accurately, lemmings, Christian conservatives march to the beat of whatever drum is being played by Focus On The Family or the Moral Majority or whomever. They are, for the most part, the GOP’s bitch every bit as much as the African American community is the Democrats’.

This election holds out the hope of breaking that cycle: of John McCain frankly acknowledging he hasn’t much of a shot at the Christian right no matter what he does. Nominating Rice would, therefore, propel the senator toward the moderates, with perhaps only the liberals being out of reach. Likewise, a Hillary/Obama or Obama/Hillary ticket would unite the typically fractious (which is why they always lose) Democratic party, giving a real voice to the communities the Democrats have traditionally taken for granted.

There is enormous potential, here. My cynicism tells me, however, it’s old fart politics as usual. It’s bait and switch. At the end of the day, McCain. Hillary and Obama will all have to run toward the right and choose some white guy with a pot belly and a toothpick in his mouth who will sit in a closet for four years while we all go back to business as usual.

Which is what makes the Rice teaser a particularly evil business, one that could really cost McCain if it goes on much longer and he ultimately does not chose her.