Fred Thompson's Progress; McCain's last gasp

TownHall.com ^ | 7/21/07 | Robert D. Novak

[JohnHuang2]

WASHINGTON -- In advance of a formal solicitation for funds or an announcement of his candidacy, Fred Thompson's presidential campaign is quietly organizing its first Washington fund-raiser at the downtown J.W. Marriott hotel the last week in July.

This event will give the clearest signal so far of how successful the actor-politician will be in his late-starting drive to finance his run for president. It will be watched carefully to see whether Thompson picks up important lobbyists and other Washingtonians who earlier had lined up for Sen. John McCain's fading campaign for the presidential nomination.

A footnote: Thompson may not announce officially as a candidate until September, although an "exploratory" committee may soon be unveiled.

MCCAIN'S LAST GASP

Sen. John McCain's virtually bankrupt presidential campaign has made a desperate fund-raising bid for small contributions, on grounds that "the liberal Hollywood elites would love to see Sens. [Barack] Obama, [Hillary] Clinton or [John] Edwards face off against any Republican other than John McCain."

A July 11 fund-raising letter was intended to reassure contributors that, contrary to speculation, McCain has no intention of dropping out of the contest. The senator signed the appeal that promised: "With so much on the line . . . , we cannot afford to give up -- or even back down one inch. My friend, I promise you, I never will."

However, McCain's letter seeking $400 contributions went to some supporters who already had sent his campaign the maximum $2,300 contribution for the primary elections.

[Darkwolf377]

When McCain drops out, I don’t see a lot of his supporters going to Giuliani. They may boost Romney, but I’d bet on the whole they’d go to Fred, aka our next pres—whoops, don’t wanna jinx it! ;)

[nathanbedford]

You are right as usual.

And as predicted, Thompson is now moving ahead of Rudy according to Rasmussen's latest count published yesterday.

So now the nomination is Fred's to lose. I do not think he will lose it. His greatest threat will be from Romney whom I suspect Fred will make his Vice Presidential running mate.

This pair would be articulate and acceptable to the entire spectrum of the Republican and conservative movement,from Bible Beaters to Country Clubbers, and they are reminiscent of Reagan and Bush in ' 80. By the way, they are possessed as no other candidates of an actual chance to win the election against Bitch Clinton. Even with these two stars, a Republican win remains a long shot. The demographics are absolutely toxic.

[Darkwolf377]

Even with these two stars, a Republican win remains a long shot. The demographics are absolutely toxic.

Would you expand on this? How do you (and others) see a Thompson-Clinton, a Thompson-Edwards, or even a Thompson-Obama matchup going?

[nathanbedford]

To expand on those ideas I offer a series of posts, the first of which I published in April, '06:

Gingrich is merely recognizing the reality of the 2004 election. That's right, the 2004 election in which sophisticated Republican legislators knew meant the beginning of the parting of the ways between them and George Bush. The 2006 election merely made plain to all that the Republican Party, if it is to survive, must publicly depart from George Bush and must wipe its fingerprints off Iraq. This is not to say that an open breach with Bush is to be sought or even desired but it is to say that we ought to recognize that our interests diverge from those of the President. He is concentrating on a failed policy in Iraq which will entirely determine his historical legacy. Today he addressed the Democrat National Committee annual winter meeting! Bush will do whatever it takes to survive and that clearly means getting into bed with the Democrats. We already know he is eager to do so on the issue of immigration. We already know that he is quite willing to endorse any level of spending. Why do we not believe that we are witnessing the morphing of George Bush just as we have seen the morphing of Arnold Schwarzenegger after his rebuke at the polls?

While Bush is preoccupied with his historical legacy which is all wrapped up with and the war in Iraq, the Republican Party must be concerned, literally, with its own survival as a viable national party. In the 2008 election the odds are against us: the 2006 election demonstrated that the Democrats are capable of raiding deep into our territory and we can make no gains anywhere in the blue states. We will be conducting a national election after having held office for eight years. The demographics are increasingly against us as unchecked immigration changes the coloration of America and in America all politics are racial, not local. From the top of the ticket on down, Republicans will face a relentless media tsunami which will require a whole new set of tactics to counter. Finally the war in Iraq is a political disaster which may shatter our election hopes across-the-board and leave the party holding not much more than the old Confederacy. The last election demonstrated that the Republican hold on Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia (gasp, the Old Dominion!), Ohio, and even Florida are in grave jeopardy and with the loss of almost any one of these states we cannot have the presidency.

Enter Newt Gingrich who I believe sees the handwriting on the wall in the general terms which I have just set down. Newt knows the only possible chance Republicans have is to revert to conservative principles and to do so while changing the subject away from Iraq, away from health care, in short, away from the entire "progressive" Democrat agenda and onto a whole new way of seeing the world. We simply cannot win the election if it is fought over Iraq and healthcare as the establishment media will try to achieve as it sets the agenda. Gingrich is possessed of the kind of mind which can change the whole agenda but he is not the right messenger.

[nathanbedford]

{Here is another post, published shortly after the last election}:

The Minority Dilemma

All political parties always face the dilemma whether to pursue purity or majority. A minority party, which is the unhappy state in which we Republicans find ourselves today, faces this dilemma without the luxury of margins, without cushions, which permit the majority party to exercise discipline and so achieve a measure of purity while retaining majority status. The minority party, perforce, must make hard choices.

When a minority party is not in static defense but is in overall retreat, the unhappy state in which we Republicans find ourselves today, the options narrow and the choices become only harder.

A minority party in retreat which does not hold to its core values risks lapsing into a coma and extinction through attrition. On the other hand, a party in retreat which is overzealous in the maintenance of ideological purity can and will easily rip itself asunder and disappear in a vapor of righteous indignation.

The current state of the conservative/Republican coalition in minority status was easily predictable, in fact, I did predict it on these threads time and again and long before the last election:

Perhaps now is not the time but certainly after Santorum is defeated we conservatives must face the reality that the electoral map is shrinking. We are unable to make inroads into the blue states (these New Jersey an anomaly due to parochial corruption) while we remain vulnerable and virtually all of the border states, Tennessee, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland (actually a lost cause). Now even the Old Dominion is threatened. Ohio may be as difficult as Pennsylvania after this cycle.

Demographics will soon turn Florida and Texas away from us and, with the loss of either one of them, conservatism has no hope of putting a president in the White House

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1724335/posts?page=17#17

One could add to this dismal geography the loss of the Senate in Montana and our losses in the Southwest in congressional districts. Even a casual inspection of a red/blue map convinces one that it is the left which is on the roll and the right which is being rolled up. The stark reality in blue and red for all to see is that the Democrats are raiding at will in our turf but we have no realistic chance anywhere in the blue states. At this rate of retreat, conservatism will be confined to the Citadel of the old Confederacy and we will pray that we can muster enough votes somehow to run a filibuster, our sole leverage left in the legislative branch.

On another occasion, in bitterness over what I saw coming in the 06 elections, I posted,

It is not a question of what we want in November, it is a question of what we are going to get because the Republicans in the House and Senate and yes, in the White House, have fumbled the ball from spending, to outright thievery, to criminal dereliction in the enforcement of the borders, to an obvious and cynical manipulation and neglect of the social conservatives, to a toadying to the likes of Teddy Kennedy and thus validating him and his ilk, to turning our education establishment over to the legislative writing pen of Teddy Kennedy, to missteps on judicial nominees including Harriet Myers and inferior court appointments, to public-relations disasters like Katrina, to the failure to push a legislative energy policy which would deflect the voters anger at the pumps to the real villains, the Democrats, to creating an unnecessary and unwanted entitlement for prescription drugs which is destined to drain our treasury.

[Darkwolf377]

Enter Newt Gingrich who I believe sees the handwriting on the wall in the general terms which I have just set down. Newt knows the only possible chance Republicans have is to revert to conservative principles and to do so while changing the subject away from Iraq, away from health care, in short, away from the entire "progressive" Democrat agenda and onto a whole new way of seeing the world.

The reason why I believe Thompson actually has an excellent chance at winning it all is because he doesn't come across as some fire-breathing right-wing caricature. To use an over-used comparison, like Reagan it is his personal presence that impresses people who may not agree with his politics. He seems rational, so whatever stance he takes on Iraq would seem to observers as something he came to with thought and honesty, not as something he NEEDED to do for political or personal reasons.

More importantly, and to your point above, he can run without making Iraq the whole of his candidacy. If needed, he could point out that he isn't coming into this with past political baggage like HRC or Edwards. I don't think it will come to that.

Similarly on healthcare, which I think the Democrats are making a huge mistake with (they fear being reminded of Hillarycare, so they are doing the generic "We'll just change things for the better, don't get bogged down in plans" routine), he can come across as rational, not some sloberring fanatic the way the Dems do on the environment and healthcare and "two Americas".

I think in 2008 the Republicans CAN win, but, and this won't be music to FReepers' ears, we are signing our own suicide note if we put our trust in a podium-pounder. We simply don't have that much credit with the average voter to burn it up on personalities.

[Darkwolf377]

Great, but depressing, stuff.

The answer is for the Republicans to offer Conservative ideas as the best alternative to Liberal ones. I fear the prescription drug plan, immigration and Katrina are all potentially fatal bodyshots.

[nathanbedford]

{Here is a third post, also published after the last election as a vanity, my attempts to focus us on what happened, why and what we must do]:

WHY WE LOST

We have three important questions to answer: 1) What happened? 2) Why did it happen? 3) What do we do now?

1) What happened?

The Republican Party in general and George W. Bush in particular sustained a stinging rebuke from the American electorate. The Republicans lost control of the house and of the Senate. The agenda moves to the Democrats. The power of the purse moves to the Democrats. The power of the subpoena moves to the Democrats. The power to impeach moves to the Democrats. The power to affect foreign policy by, for example, defunding the war moves to the Democrats. The power to appoint conservative judges has been greatly compromised as has been the power to confirm appointments such as ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of Defense.

The Republican Party has ruptured the bond that held it to the majority of the people of the United States since 1994. When the polls say that the people trust the Democrats more than Republicans on taxes, it means, as Newt Gingrich has said, they fired us because they don't trust us. It is as simple as that, the party has lost the trust of the people.

The Democrats have ideally positioned themselves to strike for the presidency in 08. It has extended its governorships, Senate seats and control, House seats and control, and other levers of power. The Democrats have enhanced their ability to raise campaign funds and compromised the Republicans' ability to do so. Perhaps worse, the Democrats have turned the tables on the Republicans. It is Republicans now who are without a platform, without an identifying philosophy and without an articulate spokesman to advance their cause.

The Democrat party is extending its tentacles into the red states and the Republican Party is in grave danger of becoming a sectional party with an ever declining census and a bunker mentality.

2) Why did it happen?

America has repudiated the war in Iraq.

The American people have spoken respecting the war in Iraq: they do not tolerate the war in which they see no plan for victory but where they do see blood and treasure being spilled to no purpose with no end in sight.

The repudiation of the Republican mandate is broad although perhaps not equally deep and evidently focused on three issues: (1) the war in Iraq. (2) corruption, the so-called, "culture of corruption" (Abramoff, Cunningham, Ney, Foley) and which Republicans like us probably think of in terms of spending. (3) incompetence. (Katrina, Iraq) Of the three, Iraq was obviously the dominant factor.

In fact, growing restiveness with the war in Iraq, predictable at least since the Bush reelection by such a narrow margin in Ohio in 04, is the overwhelming reason for the Republican debacle. The Democrats nationalized the election by converting it into a referendum on the war. In the process they managed successfully to demonize George Bush as an incompetent bumbler. They defeated candidates by morphing them into George Bush.

The essential reason for the defeat was that it was anti-Iraq war and anti-Bush.

85 percent of Americans said the “major reason” was disapproval of the administration’s handling of the war in Iraq, 71 percent said disapproval of Bush’s overall job performance, 67 percent cited dissatisfaction with how Republicans have handled government spending and the deficit, 63 percent said disapproval of the overall performance of Republicans in Congress, 61 percent said Democrats’ ideas and proposals for changing course in Iraq. Tellingly, just 27 percent said a major reason the Democrats won was because they had better candidates. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15667442/site/newsweek/

There are many subordinate reasons why this calamity happened and it is necessary to identify them and assign weight to them so that the important ones can be addressed and corrected.

One such reason can be addressed and could have been corrected, or at least mitigated: It is quite normal for a political party in the sixth year of the presidency to lose the Senate and House seats. In some respects, it was to be expected that this would occur now. Clinton, however, was able to resist this historical trend but those were rather special circumstances.

Similarly, history shows the political parties, after 12 years in power, tend to become arrogant, cynical, and corrupt and that certainly has happened to the Republicans in spades. The voters have just cured the arrogance dimension of this equation but it remains to be seen if the corruption has been rooted out. The "values voters" will tell us in the next election if the Republicans have abandoned their cynicism.

Other reasons are less easily identifiable and more subjective in nature. One goes to the very essence of the character of George Bush. I've long published that he is not a movement conservative, in fact he is not a conservative at all but rather he is a patrician with loyalties to family, friends, and country. His politics are animated not by conservative ideology but by a noblisse oblige which, as a substitute for political philosophy, move him to act from loyalty and love of country. The result of this is that he does not weigh his words and actions against a coherent standard grounded in conservatism, but instinctively reacts to do what is right for family, friends, and country. Thus we get Harriet Meirs, pandering to the Clintons and Kennedys, prescription drug laws, campaign finance laws, runaway spending, and the war in Iraq. The conservative movement is left muddled and confused and the Republican Party undisciplined and leaderless. In these circumstances all manner of mischief is possible beginning with corruption and indiscipline in the ranks. To be effective, a president must be feared as well is loved. A President is more than just Commander in Chief and Chief Executive of the nation, he is the titular head of his party and he must rule it. If Bush was willing to pander to the likes of Teddy Kennedy, what did Senator John McCain have to fear from him? Bush has utterly failed in his role as head wrangler of the Republican Party.

Other subjective reasons for the debacle involve Bush's personal character. He is essentially a nonconfrontational man who would rather operate through collegiality than through power. This is reinforced by his Christian belief and he will almost literally turn the other cheek. So, his loyalty to family and friends affects his appointments and produce mediocrities like Brown at FEMA and Ridge at Homeland Security and Harriet Meirs. It makes him shrink from prosecuting the crimes of his enemies even to the point of overlooking real security lapses committed by The New York Times. It makes it very difficult for Bush to discipline his troops and fire incompetent or disloyal subordinates. Instead he soothes them with the Medal of Freedom.

George Bush is a singularly inarticulate man. When he is not delivering a prepared speech, his sincerity and goodness of character come through, but his policies often die an agonizing death along with the syntax. The truth is that Bush has never been able, Ronald Reagan style, to articulate well the three or four fundamental issues which move the times in which we live. One need only cite the bootless efforts to reform Social Security as an example. His inability to tell America why we must fight in Iraq to win the greater worldwide war against terrorism, or how we are even going to win in Iraq, has been fatal to the Republicans' chances in this election. Of course, one can carry this Billy Budd characterization too far and it is easy to overemphasize its importance, but it is part of the general pattern which has led us to this pass. It is a very great pity that the bully pulpit has been squandered in the hands of a man so inarticulate. That the bully pulpit was wasted means that there are no great guiding principles for the country, for the party, for the administration, for Congress to follow, or for the voters to be inspired by. If the voters went into the booth confused about what the Republican Party stands for, the fault is primarily George Bush's.

There are structural problems for the Republicans as well. By the demographic breakdown of the Northeast and the ambitions of senators such as McCain, there was no coherent Republican policy in the Senate. It is in the nature of the Senate that wayward senators are difficult to bring to heel in any circumstance and Bush's inability properly to act as party leader has given Mavericks a green light to commit terrible damage to the Republicans' electoral posture. This demographic trend is destined to get worse and the self survival instincts of what is left of the Republican Party outside of the South will only become more acute and lead to more defections. Other senators, even when not motivated by personal ambition or demographic problems in blue states, felt free to engage in an extravaganza of corrupt spending to benefit their districts and soothe their contributors. There is a regrettable tendency to underemphasize the demographic handicap under which we conservatives struggle. Here is what I posted, before the election:

Perhaps now is not the time but certainly after Santorum is defeated we conservatives must face the reality that the electoral map is shrinking. We are unable to make inroads into the blue states (these New Jersey an anomaly due to parochial corruption) while we remain vulnerable and virtually all of the border states, Tennessee, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland (actually a lost cause). Now even the Old Dominion is threatened. Ohio may be as difficult as Pennsylvania after this cycle.

Demographics will soon turn Florida and Texas away from us and, with the loss of either one of them, conservatism has no hope of putting a president in the White House

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1724335/posts?page=17#17

Bush failed to provide leadership on spending. Merely cutting taxes is only one leg of the stool, fiscal discipline must be maintained. Failing to impose party discipline is a grave sin, but Bush magnified it exponentially with the mindless prescription drug entitlement, farm supports, and educational spending. If Bush can have his prescription drug program that nobody wanted, why cannot Senator Stevens in Alaska have his bridge that nobody needed? Bush not only failed to set the proper example in fiscal discipline, he affirmatively set the wrong example of profligacy.

Press bias, says you?. One need only cite the unrelenting hostility of the Washington Post against Senator Allen to demonstrate Republican difficulties in this area. Allen's real opponent was the Washington Post. But this is not new, the Washington Post did the same thing to Ollie North several cycles ago and will do so again whenever it gets the chance. Republicans have been able to overcome this handicap in recent elections, so long as they had an effective affirmative story to tell. In fairness to the Republicans, it is true to say that the hostility of the press has reached even more egregious dimensions as a result of the war in Iraq. The remedy for this is to get a policy and tell your story well. In short, set the agenda, one which the public hears and understands in spite of the media. The classic example of this is Newt Gingrich's brilliant contract with America in 1994 in which he stole the entire agenda right out from under the noses of the drive-by media. I think their visceral hatred of Gingrich has as much to do with this coup as it does with the actual right wing policies contained in the contract with America. If one is not willing to accept the world as it is with all of its media bias then one is ultimately confounded. If one cannot move until press bias is corrected, then one cannot move on until the bias in academia or in immigrant groups is eliminated. The scale will never be balanced and conservatism, too anguished to move, will never find another majority.

While some exit polls say that only 7% of voters regarded immigration as the important issue, I am personally convinced that the percentage is much higher among conservatives and, anyway, the implications for the Republican Party and the conservative cause of unchecked illegal immigration is nothing short of catastrophic. Bush bashing or not, the cold reality is that George Bush has willfully and deliberately failed to to enforce the nation's laws on immigration. Bush has simply got a blind spot here, he wants amnesty and, by God, now he is going to get it because the Democrats are going to give it to him. The only hope for sanity in controlling immigration has died with Republican control of the House. Bush's duty was to enforce existing law against employers who seek unfair competitive advantage by hiring illegals at substandard wages. Now we have upwards of 30 million illegals in America and there is no conservative branch of government that can stop these people getting the vote eventually and, believe me, they will not vote conservative in my lifetime. Bush's stealth legacy to the Republican Party will become apparent as he exits the White House and Republicans remain in minority status for as long as the eye can see. Bush's dereliction in this regard justifies every conservative in turning his face from Bush and many did on election Day.

Lest this become a Bush bashing fest, let us note that Congressmen and Senators are for the most part alpha males (and sometimes bitchy females) who quite rightly should be expected to do the right thing without the fear and admonition of the President. But they did not. The single most appropriate word which identifies the Republican Congress before the election is, "arrogance" - although "greed" must run a very close second. Winston Churchill once said of the Socialist Clement Atley, "he is a very modest man, and he has much to be modest about." Running the gamut from sordid affiliations with K street lobbyists and the Abramoffs of the world, to unseemly earmarks, and continuing all the way to outright venality, the Republicans have much to be more than modest about. The voters have just dealt them their comeuppance and it is long overdue. But elections are blunt instruments for weeding out corruption; the voters wrath, like God's rain, falls on the just and the unjust alike. So honest and incorrupt conservative representatives of the people like Rick Santorum fall with the Cunninghams and the Neys and the Foleys while Democrat Menendez enjoys a pass. While it does not discriminate among Republicans, the voters wrath does discriminate between parties and so their wrath fell disproportionately on Republicans because they are the party in power. This also has been remedied by this election. Finally, in a strange way the voters grim unhappiness with the course of the war in Iraq finds expression in this general repugnance of the corruption and venality and directs it almost exclusively against the Republicans, because they are the party associated with the war. It is human nature to react to an irritant disproportionately when the soul is troubled by larger problems. This identification as the party solely responsible for the war is something the Republicans must remedy in the next two years.

All of these factors so far cited are in themselves not party breakers and could have been managed and mitigated but for the elephant in the room: The war in Iraq. Indeed, the superficially inconsistent results of this election cannot be understood unless one accepts the centrality of the issue of the war in Iraq. It was the fulcrum upon which all else turned. Why did the voters overlook the corruption of Democrats and punish disproportionately Republicans? The war in Iraq. Why did the electorate conclude that the administration has been incompetent in handling hurricane Katrina while resolutely declining to consider other explanations? The war in Iraq. The Democrats and the media contrived to make Katrina a metaphor for Iraq and the people largely bought it because they were uneasy about Iraq but patriotic enough to want victory. So they could resolve their ambivalence by reacting to Katrina. The same analysis applies to the issue of the culture of corruption. Why were conservative issues respectfully treated by the electorate when it came to referenda? Because they were not tainted by the war in Iraq. Why was Lincoln Chafee turned out in Rhode Island even though he was adamantly against the war in Iraq? Because his identification as a member of the party responsible for the war overcame his individual posture. The rabidly antiwar voters in Rhode Island knew that Chafee would be casting his votes for control of the Senate with the Republican war party. Why was Senator Lieberman returned in Connecticut as independent despite his support for the war? I have no explanation except to say this anomaly can be explained in terms of Republican defection into his camp and the extraordinarily high personal appeal and integrity of a man who only two cycles ago was his party's vice presidential nominee. Besides, Lieberman made it clear that he would cast his votes for Senate control with the Democrats-the antiwar party in this election. Why do polls show that the administration and the party have lost the confidence of the people in conducting the overall war against terror? Because the people have concluded that the war in Iraq has been conducted incompetently. Katrina or Iraq, chicken or the egg, it all feeds upon itself.

When an uneasy independent voter drew the curtain in the booth he had to choose, statistically speaking, between a Democrat and a Republican. Uneasy about the war, this voter could resolve this dilemma by rationalizing his choice for the Democrats on other grounds like corruption, or incompetence. When a thinking conservative entered the booth, or more likely considers whether to travel to the polling place at all, he could resolve his logical dilemma by staying home where he would not have to choose between his party and his logic because he could justify that decision out of anger over spending and immigration. This conservative voter is like the man who comes home unexpectedly from a business trip, goes upstairs, enters the bedroom where he finds his wife naked in bed, opens the closet door and finds a naked man there with an erection, and hears his wife say, "who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" Well, the conservative voter, deeply troubled by what he sees concerning the war in Iraq, can avoid the dilemma by not opening the closet door, by not going to the polling place.

[Darkwolf377]

Great post, especially:

Other subjective reasons for the debacle involve Bush's personal character. He is essentially a nonconfrontational man who would rather operate through collegiality than through power. This is reinforced by his Christian belief and he will almost literally turn the other cheek. So, his loyalty to family and friends affects his appointments and produce mediocrities like Brown at FEMA and Ridge at Homeland Security and Harriet Meirs. It makes him shrink from prosecuting the crimes of his enemies even to the point of overlooking real security lapses committed by The New York Times. It makes it very difficult for Bush to discipline his troops and fire incompetent or disloyal subordinates. Instead he soothes them with the Medal of Freedom. George Bush is a singularly inarticulate man. When he is not delivering a prepared speech, his sincerity and goodness of character come through, but his policies often die an agonizing death along with the syntax. The truth is that Bush has never been able, Ronald Reagan style, to articulate well the three or four fundamental issues which move the times in which we live.

I have to wonder how much Bush will be an element in 2008. I can see him gladly staying out of the fray, and the nominee glad to let him.

At the same time, with no sitting VP running, I can see the public looking at Thompson and not seeing Bush. The choice will be between either a Democrat (Edwards or Obama) and Thompson, or Hillary and Thompson. In that situation, I'm not sure how Hillary would fare. I used to think she'd wipe the floor with anyone, but I'm more inclined to think she will lose if she's the nominee. I believe ANY nominee other than Thompson or Giuliani would be seen as Republican vs. Hillary.

If it comes to Democrat vs. Republican, I think we're sunk.

[counterpunch]

So now the nomination is Fred's to lose. I do not think he will lose it. His greatest threat will be from Romney whom I suspect Fred will make his Vice Presidential running mate.

Romney doesn't pose a threat to anyone but house pets.
Just kidding, of course. I like Romney, and he was my early choice, (provided Newt didn't get in). However, that said, Romney really doesn't bring anything to the table for Thompson. He is more a liability than an asset. Romney was the early "conservative" choice, for lack of better options. Thompson fulfills the "better options" part. Romney looks like he could play the part of the President in a movie. Fred Thompson actually has. Those were the assets. The liabilities are that he comes across like a well oiled politician who tailors his politics to his current audience. The way he's running now versus how he ran for Governor of Massachusetts reflects that. He has the highest negatives of any of the GOP front runners, perhaps in part due to his Mormon faith. While I don't base my support of a politician on their religion, many people do, including many people here.

I think Rudy Giuliani will be Thompson's VP choice. It is Thompson/Giuliani who will be reminiscent of Reagan/Bush in 1980, for precisely the same reason: they will unite two disparate sides of the GOP. Romney on the other hand won't bring anyone that Thompson can't capture on his own.

[nathanbedford]

What was the revealing remark by the elitist, left-wing female magazine writer who exclaimed, "how did Ronald Reagan win, nobody I know voted for him?" Reagan won 49 states. We must guard against the same myopia which infects conservatism and which is reflected daily on these threads. The reality is the right has scant chance of winning in 2008 and this reality applies when election with or without Bitch Clinton.

First, most FReepers analyze election through the prism of their own reality. The center of America is no longer white. At least not when one subtracts lesbians and homosexuals, Jews and environmentalists, teachers and government unions, etc.

The appalling reality is that on election day Slick and the Bitch know that they will wake up that morning with at least 45% of all votes as secure as though they had cast them themselves. 93% or more of blacks, 60-70% of Hispanics, 90% of homosexuals, 18-90% of Jews, 90-100% of the environmentalists, she knows that she is assured of even carrying close to majority level of white females. How many Sentinent white males must Fred Thompson carry in compensation to win the day?

But let us analyze the election the way the professionals would do it: Geographically. That is after all the way it plays out in the electoral College and it is only in this framework that the ethnic breakdown should be understood. There is nothing good about the geographical breakdown that I have emphasized in those previous posts which I have republished this morning.

No matter how you slice it, Iraq, demographics, geography, 8 years in power, resistance by the media, everything points to a debacle. It is only the kind of new thinking now being expressed by Gingrich (and not, alas, by Thomson or Romney) which has a chance of kicking over the table and imposing a new game which we might have a chance of winning.

[counterpunch]

While it may be in close physical proximity to mine, I would like to distance myself from the above post.

[hershey]

In the mix of events overtaking ‘08 prognostications, you have to add an attack on the US homeland by AlQaeda (or generic Jihadists — Muslims) — with lives lost, especially children — a Beslan type attack as outlined on Fox the other night by an author whose recent book deals with just this event. At that point Hill has a problem. Of course, republicans would be blamed....’you didn’t protect the country, where’s homeland security, etc.’, but Obama wants to sit down and talk to Muslims, as does Richardson. ‘Ask what they want and give it to them’ philosophy. If Fred’s the nominee, he’d win.

[nathanbedford]

Could we get Gov. Richardson to rat and run with Thompson? I believe he would do it in a heartbeat (after all, he was Slick's bagman to find a job for Monica at the UN so principles are not an issue with Richardson)but do we want the election that badly?

[Raycpa]

Maybe now McCain will support Bush more often.

[Darkwolf377]

What was the revealing remark by the elitist, left-wing female magazine writer who exclaimed, "how did Ronald Reagan win, nobody I know voted for him?"

Are you thinking of Pauline Kael, who said the same thing but about Nixon?

I don't know how secure Hillary is. Her name recognition can't get any higher, but she has a lot of negatives. I've never heard any man go on about her as many women have--in the negative.

While of course I respect your thinking and writing, I'm just not convinced that the electorate sees things so linearly (8 years of Republicans, time for something new). Bush 41's victory was not the third Reagan term, no matter how many people try to tell me otherwise--he never came off as someone who was going to continue Reagan's reign in all but name. So when I look at the trends you note I am worried, but remain unconvinced.

I think people keep forgetting, ironically, 9-11. I work with young people, and you might be surprised how many of them claim to be liberals and Democrats but who see a strong defense as the #1 priority. These people were kids on 9-11 and will be voting for President in '08.

As always, you provide a lot to chew on, and thanks for posting it.

[Darkwolf377]

Why?

[nathanbedford]

Yup, thanks for the correction and the kind remarks.

[Raycpa]

I believe we will have a demographic unknown with a potential female president who is a liberal. Some observers think she will bring out female voters who don’t usually vote. I think we have a number of females and liberal males who will be afraid to have a female president during war time, especially a liberal one.

In any case, the demographic history won’t be a reliable indicator.