Posted on 10/17/2007 8:08:58 PM PDT by Calpernia
Dateline: NASHVILLE
U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson says he seldom hears about abortion in campaign travels throughout Tennessee and hopes the issue is downplayed at the Republican National Convention.
The Tennessee Republican, an abortion-rights defender in a party with an anti-abortion tilt, is preparing for next week's convention in San Diego . He said the party must avoid distracting issues and focus on electing Bob Dole as president.
''We need to concentrate on what brings us together and not what divides us,'' Thompson said in an interview with The Tennessean published Tuesday.
Thompson said he opposes making early-term abortions a crime, as some Republicans would like to do with a constitutional amendment.
''But I don't think you should bolt on one issue. I'm still not convinced platforms are a good idea. We know what we believe in and I don't think we need to write it all down in a document,'' Thompson said.
''We're going to have to decide in this country whether we reduce the number of abortions or fight about the number of abortions. There are lots of things that we could do in terms of education and adoption to reduce the number of abortions. The two sides are so vigorous in opposing each other that they ignore the question of the number of abortions taking place.''
Thompson, a lawyer and actor born in Lawrenceburg, is seeking to keep the Senate seat once held by Vice President Gore.
In 1994, an obscure opponent got 37 percent of the vote against Thompson in the Republican primary, which some observers attribute to an abortion backlash.
Last week Thompson got 96 percent of the Republican primary vote against another unknown opponent.
Abortion isn't likely to emerge as an issue in Thompson's 1996 general election campaign. His Democratic opponent, Covington lawyer Houston Gordon, favors abortion rights, said campaign manager Joyce McDaniel.
Thompson said he has voted consistently against providing federal funding for abortions and voted for a bill, vetoed by President Clinton, to ban late term partial-birth abortions.
With no author, it stinks to high heaven.
I’m sure that Fred wrote to his hometown paper and demanded a retraction, like I’m sure he did for all the other similar articles from the 1990s. /s
Would you have posted this unauthorized piece?
Why is it unauthorized? The AP does not always give you the author of the piece.
So you would have?
..that's out of line
If you have a problem with open discussion about policy positions of any candidate, perhaps you might find peace with the malcontents at WideAwakes...
Well, you can’t shield your guy from his history. And as far as I know, the AP, the Commercial Appeal, and blogs are still postable commodities. Looks like another blogger picked it up.
http://theamericanwriter2007.blogspot.com/
Hey, I’m getting popular. LOL
BTW I saw that blog piece you linked to. It's moving around the blogosphere. FDT should come out and state yea or nay if he is still of that mindset. It would clear up a lot of this controversy IMO...
Open discussion is one thing, rehashing the same old tire arguments over and over and over and over and over and over and over.......... is not designed to elicit thoughtful debate. It’s called beating a dead horse.
Cool, then you must have read this article before. You must be a Lexis/Nexis subscriber or Newsbank subscriber. I admire your search for the truth.
The Fred folks attack on Mitt as a flip flopper will be lost, but it’s better to come clean. Dishonesty is worse.
Why would I bother to do that??? I believe it was you who stated the other day that the MSM couldn’t be trusted to report the facts correctly as it regarded your savior DH’s pork barrel spending record and his C to B- grades given to him by the National Taxpayers Union. So do I have this correct, the MSM is not to be trusted when reporting about DH, but it is to be trusted when reporting about FDT???? It is amazing how our own personal views on matters can warp the space-time fabric of reality isn’t it???? We’re going to have to put you on a 24/7 suicide watch soon when DH drops out of the race.
..plain old Google Blog Search will turn up a lot of interesting stuff...
Since I’ve learned the hard way what the posting requirements are, if this was in Front Page, it would need a hard source URL.
Non hard sourced news and blogs go to blogger.
Unless I’m misunderstanding, that is generally the posting rules.
Ah, grasshopper. He who go to bed with itchy butt, wake up with smelly finger.
The MSM can slant a story alright. Like the crap that Fox News ran yesterday on Fred regarding his tenuous ties to the Fred Phelps gang. Classic hit piece, and it backfired, frankly. Hit pieces abound. Just like the one you posted.
But when a politician is grossly misquoted or his entire position on a subject is misrepresented, the politicians, especially in their hometwon papers, are very quick to demand a correction. These are direct quotes in this piece, and in the same vein as all his other statements on the subject from that time.
You posted a piece on the DP-2 getting quotes from a longtime DP-2 opponent, skewering the program. And I proceeded to post to you the Chief Scientist of Naval Warfares 2001 testimony as a rebuttal to the hit piece.
Now if you stumble across an article where Hunter himself is quoted as saying it really is a POS, then we’ll have an apples to apples comparison.
I also pointed out to you that the NTU weighs trade votes and military spending. It is a fact.
So keep babbling away, you at least entertain yourself. After all, this was posted over and over and over and over....
We need to concentrate on stopping the mass killing of innocent human beings. Then we can worry about being brought together with Democrats. IMHO.
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