Dick Morris: Condi's the GOP's Next Eisenhower

Top political strategist Dick Morris said Tuesday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could win the GOP's 2008 presidential nod much the same way Gen. Dwight Eisenhower did in 1952.

"I think what's going to happen is that all over the country - people who see [Condi's] qualifications or are entranced by the job she's doing as Secretary of State and who are scared to death of the other one [Hillary], are going to get together and set up Condi clubs in their localities," Morris told WOR Radio's Bob Grant.

Explaining the central premise of his new book "Condi vs Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race," Morris said the pro-Rice groups will be able to "field their own [convention] delegate slates" who will remain officially uncommitted, "but in fact will be for Condi."

"I think that those delegate slates, particularly in Iowa, are going to start winning." said Morris. "And that's going to blow up the Republican nominating process and create an irresistible momentum for Condi.

"Dwight Eisenhower did the exact same thing," Morris told Grant. "Eisenhower stayed as commander-in-chief of NATO, he didn't campaign, announced two weeks before the Republican convention, won the primaries as a write-in candidate and beat Bob Taft for the nomination."

Grant said that while he's been "an admirer of Condoleezza Rice since before she became the National Security Advisor . . . I always felt there was an aloof quality to her."

Morris responded that some mistake Rice's sense of dignity for aloofness, and said that her unique charisma is likely to spark a grass roots campaign.

He said Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is running on borrowed DNA.

"I liked Bill Clinton. I think he was a good president," Morris told Grant. "I'm proud that I helped reelect him. But I have never liked Hillary Clinton.

"It's one thing to say I liked Bobby Kennedy and Jack Kennedy but I don't like Teddy. At least there's DNA there - they're related."

But Morris noted: "There's no genetic material between Bill and Hillary Clinton. And in many ways they're opposites."