▲ Click the box to see where he stands on the issues. ▲
Let me know if you'd like to join the Fred Thompson ping list.
Posted on 03/08/2007 7:43:28 PM PST by West Coast Conservative
Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson is facing increased calls to get into the 2008 GOP nomination race.
Sources told FOX News that Thompson, 62, now one of the stars of the popular NBC prime time series "Law & Order," has not ruled out a presidential bid, and has authorized advisers and supporters to continue to gauge support.
Advisers are holding regular strategy sessions, investigating fundraising avenues and private polling to measure enthusiasm. Perhaps pre-eminent among a number of prominent Thompson backers working behind the scenes is former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker.
Baker has been a mentor to Thompson since before the Senate's Watergate hearings, for which Baker hired Thompson as majority counsel and for which Thompson earned fame for having Baker ask the key question that led to President Richard Nixon's downfall: "What did the president know and when did he know it?"
Baker ran for president himself in 1980. Thompson eyed the White House in the 1990s.
While Thompson, who also helped raise money and advise I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's legal defense fund, continues to mull a bid, sources said he has been inundated with calls from GOP donors and supporters urging him to run.
Thompson has a solid and consistently conservative voting record that his supporters said makes a stark contrast to Republican frontrunners Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney.
This week, he told radio news host Mark Levin that he would have something to say about his plans, but not yet.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I don't know much about her.
I thought she was just a widow.
lol. man, is mccain getting a beat down.
This race is getting crazier ever day!
With Fred Thompson the entire field looks like this:
Rudy, McCain, Romney, Newt, Fred Thompson, Huckabee, Hunter, Brownback, Tancredo, Ron Paul, Tommy Thompson, Jim Gilmore
Let's assume also that Condi jumps in too. The top tier, which I define by those who can raise gobs of cash, becomes:
Rudy, McCain, Romney, Newt, Condi, and Fred Thompson.
That will result in a historical dog-fight. This is insane, the party will go all sorts of directions and I don't see anyone coming out unscathed! Fred Thompson may come out on top, but I am not so sure.
That's kinda funny.
He divorced in 1985, readily available sources don't tell me why, but we'd want to know. He remarried in 2002, so while she's much younger than he is, she wasn't "young" when he married her, so that shouldn't be a problem for too many people.
There are rumors he enjoyed the company of women during his years, but I haven't seen anything in published sources about it. I suppose that could be a problem as well, although my opinion is there probably isn't any recent cheating since he wasn't married from 1985-2002, and I doubt he's been cheating in his last 4 years. He has a child by his latest marriage.
If Fred enters the race its the end of McCaain and Romney.
When he came to the Senate I had very high hopes; in fact, I anticipated him truly nailing the Clintonoids when he ran the 1997 Senate hearings looking into the White House fundraising "coffees."
Unfortunately, the hearings proved a disappointment and Fred's towering presence ultimately, in my opinion, went rather limp as the Clinton gang and their Democrat Protectorate ran circles around him. He was also, as Republicans in DC tend to be, so focused on being "fair" and being seen as such by the media, that his hearings descended into appeasement.
But he is a decent man with good qualities; I would vote for him were he the Republican nominee. However, I personally would prefer someone who will go for the kill.
Personally I think all the finger pointing over marital issues is a distraction. I'm more concerned about why Rudy feels a need to hide from the first debate. We know he's a quick thinker, now he needs to stand out there and face hard questions about actual issues.
Fred and his wife, Sarah (from whom he was divorced in 1985), both worked to put Thompson through Vanderbilt and support their three kids....
A friend of his notes that "there's been a long line of women" in the decade since Thompson's divorce, including a semi-serious relationship with country music singer Lorrie Morgan. Says Sen. Orrin Hatch, who chairs the Judiciary Committee on which Thompson sits, "Really lovely women just seem to like Fred"
She is listed as his "Girlfriend" on the NNBD site. I don't think she was involved during either of his marriages, although I've found almost nothing about his first marriage (which lasted 24 years, and ended the same year he started his acting career).
A very attractive first lady.
Ping.
"She's something like 34 years old now. Now, THAT would be interesting."
No, she's 40. JERI L KEHN BIRTH DATE: 09/1966
They are pretty good about properly recording votes. How they use those votes to put people on their grid sometimes amazes me.
Thompson wasn't big on tort reform which the site took as a non-conservative position. He had one or two really strange votes, like one where it seems he was against restricting minor's access to violent movies. That could either be seen as an anti-family-value position (which is how the site seemed to treat it) or it could be a strong libertarian position.
He's not perfect. He's the kind of person where you would have to make some compromise, but it's what they meant when they defined the word compromise, not the "sacrifice all your principles" kind of compromise you'd have to do for Rudy.
I was hoping he would run in 2000
"Unfortunately, the hearings proved a disappointment and Fred's towering presence ultimately, in my opinion, went rather limp as the Clinton gang and their Democrat Protectorate ran circles around him."
Never forget the 900 FBI raw data files. If the contest is between Thompson and Clinton, everything Thompson's ever thought about thinking about will become part of the smear campaign.
Let me know if you'd like to join the Fred Thompson ping list.
I wish we had bet some money on the first trashing.
I'm sure there's more to come. The real haters aren't even here yet.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.