Posted on 07/19/2007 7:33:24 AM PDT by pissant
This may be the political version of Evolution. The New York Times is out this morning with a story about billing records that show Fred Thompson did indeed charge for his time while helping a pro-choice group. Details from the article below:
Billing records show that former Senator Fred Thompson spent nearly 20 hours working as a lobbyist on behalf of a group seeking to ease restrictive federal rules on abortion counseling in the 1990s, even though he recently said he did not recall doing any work for the organization.
According to records from Arent Fox, the law firm based in Washington where Mr. Thompson worked part-time from 1991 to 1994, he charged the organization, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, about $5,000 for work he did in 1991 and 1992. The records show that Mr. Thompson, a probable Republican candidate for president in 2008, spent much of that time in telephone conferences with the president of the group, and on three occasions he reported lobbying administration officials on its behalf.
Mr. Thompson's work for the family planning agency has become an issue because he is positioning himself as a faithful conservative who is opposed to abortion.
Read the whole article here. The Brody File has a call in to Thompson's people. Check back later for an update. Already, email is coming into The Brody File about the story. Here's one:
"The significance of this is not what Fred did 16 years ago. Had he been candid and honest, and explained himself, all would be well. The issue is that Fred lied for political expediency, and allowed others on his staff to do so on his behalf."
Lied may too strong a word. It seems like Thompson did what most politicians do. They beat around the bush and try to avoid an outright apology. Let's review shall we?
When this story first broke, Thompson's spokesman Mark Corallo said the following:
"Fred Thompson did not lobby for this group, period."
Then it became Thompson had "no recollection of doing any work on behalf of this group. He may have been consulted by one of the firm's partners who represented this group in 1991".
Days after the story broke, Thompson told radio talk show Sean Hannity:
"You need to separate a lawyer advocating a position from the position itself. They will probably come at me, in 35 years of law practice, with some people, I represented criminal defendants. I was a prosecutor. I had a general law practice. So that in and of itself doesn't mean anything anyway. … I'm not going to get down in the weeds with everything they dredge up over the next six months."
Thompson also sent in a column to the Powerline blog where he seemed to suggest he did some work:
"A lawyer who is a candidate or a prospective candidate for office finds himself in an interesting position because of the nature of the legal profession and the practice of law. … I've experienced another gambit of those schooled in the creative uses of law and politics: dredging up clients - or another lawyer's clients -that I may have represented or consulted with and then using the media to get me into a public debate as to what I may have done for them or said to them 15 or 20 years ago. Even if my memory serves me correctly, Even it would not be appropriate for a lawyer to make such comments."
Any way you slice it, what we have here is an "evolving story". This isn't really about the abortion issue. Because of Thompson's consistent pro-life record in the Senate, pro-family groups will probably give him a pass on that aspect. But Thompson needs to be careful. He wants people to see him as a plain spoken, tell it like it is southerner. But evolving stories like this are normally left to "inside the beltway" Washington insiders. For his campaign to be successful, he needs to be seen as a Washington outsider not just another politician who is spinning his way out of a mess.
wow, what incisive commentary you bring to the table. rudy more your cup of tea?
LOL!
oh ok, a mittmutt with an affinity for the wienieman : )
I despise Rudy but would choose Romney by default, because he hasn’t been corrupted by the Washington cesspool yet. In a perfect world, I’d love to see Duncan Hunter but he doesn’t have the ground game.
And I'm not anti-Fred at all. But I do think we need to know the product we're buying into.
Fred Thompson on Abortion
Voted YES on maintaining ban on Military Base Abortions. (Jun 2000)
Voted YES on banning partial birth abortions. (Oct 1999)
Voted YES on banning human cloning. (Feb 1998)
i would accept romney, but have absolutely no confidence in his conservatism. hunter is going nowhere though a good man. Fred is the most conservative of the electable candidates. i don’t vote based on youthful appearance, though i suppose some are that shallow, because lord knows there is a cadre of shallow women that are put off by his wife.
Yeah, that's why he has goose eggs from NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Sorry, but if he supported abortion on demand, that would have shown up in their rankings at some point.
For whatever statements he made before entering the Senate, his voting record in the Senate on abortion is solid, and he now states Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Out of the four front-runners, he is by far the best regarding abortion. These attacks are efforts by an unholy alliance of libs and his opponents in the GOP to try and draw moral equivalence between Fred and the Rudy McRomney bunch.
According to his groups website they did NOT support Thompson when he was in the Senate.
Is it? Which of the statements are false?
I agree with you that Thompson opposes partial birth abortion, opposes human cloning and opposes government funding for abortion -- you can keep posting the same stuff and I'll still agree with you. But he doesn't oppose first trimester abortion on demand, or if he does now, he didn't when he was in the Senate, and he said as much repeatedly.
*************
Be careful you don't tweak them out of voting for a Thompson/Hunter ticket. :)
“This may be the political version of Evolution. The New York Times is out this morning with a story about billing records that show Fred Thompson did indeed charge for his time while helping a pro-choice group.”
When I was a younger and more selfish man I once drove a friend to an abortion clininc. I even paid for it.
Of course that has no bearing on my current feelings on the subject, I find it reprehensible and wish that I had been mature enough to talk her out of it all those years ago.
“about $5,000 for work he did in 1991 and 1992.”
15, 16 years ago. That’s pretty pathetic. I hear Duncan Hunter once farted in church 30 years ago, should we hold it against him?
Such an attempt would galvanize the pro-abort camp, quite frankly. Instead, support for abortion is gradually eroding, and we may have the 5-4 vote now needed to either overturn or neuter Roe sufficiently to allow states to outlaw abortion on demand.
And once enough states have done such, you have the 3/4s base of states needed to ratify such an amendment, over the objections of states such as NY, MA and CA. So IMO, that is the endgame, not the start of the game.
***********
LOL! xsmommy, you've got claws. :)
“He should be honest and admit his views on abortion have been somewhat fluid.”
He has, he said that at one time he was pro-life in his mind, but after he saw his daughter on a sonogram he is now pro-life in his heart.
I know that he is a Hunter’s supporter. But the way he is attacking Fred is helping Hillary’s team to bring down GOP front runner.
The problem with this story is sorting out the difference between:
A. Thompson’s long held-belief in the limits that the Federal Government should have and the role the Federal Government should play in the lives of individuals.
B. Thompson’s personal conviction on the morality and ethics of abortion.
Many times, position (A) may seem at odds with position (B). Thompson will have to explain the difference between the two if he decides to run.
Thanks for posting that link for the blog piece traderrob. Would it be possible to post the whole thing on the thread?
Correct. He opposed the legislation they supported at the time. But at the same time, he refused to support efforts to pass a constitutional effort banning abortion, and made repeated statements -- IN PUBLIC -- saying he opposed any effort to outlaw the practice.
I'm not sure why you're not getting this -- there's a big difference between opposing just partial birth abortion and opposing ALL abortion.
For whatever statements he made before entering the Senate,
In 1997 he was in the Senate, and in 1997 he still said he opposed outlawing abortion, saying "that government should not interfere with individual convictions and actions in this area."
I’ll forgive him, but only if he runs.
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.