WASHINGTON —Mitt Romney’s vice presidential search has entered a new phase: auditions.
As his campaign evaluates potential running mates, Republicans with a possible shot at the No. 2 spot on the presidential ticket are starting to engage in unofficial public tryouts for the traditional vice presidential role of attack dog.
Democratic President Barack Obama is “the most ill-prepared person to assume the presidency in my lifetime,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared in a speech in Kentucky this week.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida told South Carolina Republicans that there hasn’t been such a “divisive figure in modern American history” as Obama.
Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, speaking Tuesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, said Obama “wants to take us further in the wrong direction.”
In an Alabama appearance this month, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal called Obama “the most incompetent president since Jimmy Carter.”
Not that any of them — or any of the others who may have landed a spot on Romney’s list — are talking about becoming vice president.
Nor are any of them acknowledging that they’re trying out for the role or saying the Romney campaign has asked them to do so. Top Romney aides are sworn to secrecy, as are potential running mates and their staffs — an example of the Romney campaign’s closely controlled, no-leaks culture.
But their high-profile appearances come more than a month after Romney assumed, for all practical purposes, leadership of the Republican Party.
