Oh let them pick apart the way Fred speaks. It all most of them have. Its been a while since I’ve read ‘no fire in the belly’ or ‘his wife is too young’.
You're right!
I read Hugh Hewitt's Townhall site on occasion. For the most part they live in darkness there, it seems -- Thompson is simply nonexistent in most posts, and the few that mention him dismiss him on empty charges. A lot of them are like Hugh and made dewey-eyed by Romney, but a lot of them are very disgruntled and in search of a "true" conservative. They like Huckabee and Hunter. The only thing they can legitimately lay at Thompson's feet is CFR, that's it. Yet they never deal with Thompson; the few who dare to bring him up write him off lazily with things like, "He's no different than the rest of them if you do a little digging when it comes to changing positions or being consistent." They cite polls where he's at 4%, and I'm thinking, "The guy's within an easy margin-of-error of second and first place in a lot of the polls I see." They are oblivious to Thompson, and it's weird!
I'd post more to help open their eyes, except I find Townhall to always be a pain for posting. Half the time my password doesn't work. Probably just as good. It's just amazing that so many there have zero clue.
“Uh, you know, he’s uh got no fire in the belly, uh, or you know his wife is too young, or something.”
Sadly, Charlie Rose does *not* know these things.
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I’ve also noticed that the attacks on Fred, in the press and on this forum, are almost always attacks on him personally, not attacks on his principles. “He’s too old, his wife’s too young, he got in too late, he’s lazy, no fire in the belly, he says ‘you know’ too much.” Which makes sense, since ad hominem attacks are what people resort to when they have no substantive argument.