Posted on 08/30/2007 7:29:56 AM PDT by jellybean
A daily round-up of Fred news.
Finally, Ready for His Close-Up? For months, Fred Thompson has been a political tease -- not quite a candidate for the White House, but playing the part as well as he did the gruff district attorney on "Law & Order."
Now, the sand in the hourglass finally appears to be running out. With the "unofficial" Labor Day kickoff to the fall campaign just days away, Thompson's quips about "testing the waters" are wearing thin, even for Jay Leno, who joked that "it's not wrinkles on his face anymore. He's starting to prune up from being under water so much."
With summer all but gone, the presidential primaries moving ever earlier and a constant stream of news stories questioning the organizational skills of the people shaping Thompson's "soft" rollout, all indications are that the nascent campaign will finally begin to pull back the curtain, possibly as early as today. And he has little choice: Thompson has to get in now if he wants to the raise money and set up a campaign organization that can compete with former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
There are unmistakeable signs that a formal announcement is imminent. Sources said the timing of such an announcement will become clear within the next 36 hours. More...
Thompson supporters to get informed on next steps By John Rodgers
Randy Enwright, the national political director of The Friends of Fred Thompson committee, has organized a 3 p.m. conference call today with top supporters to disclose the next steps Thompson will be taking, The City Paper has learned.
The call’s bottom-line will likely be the specifics on Thompson announcing his bid, which is expected to be sometime next week or the week after that.
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I hope this is the day!!!
It can’t be too much longer. The staff appears to be in place, and the “testing the waters” phase has to come to a close soon. Plus, with another end-of-quarter coming up soon, he’s going to want to maximize his fundraising window there.
Transcript from Fred’s interview with Ed Morrissey @ Captain’s Quarters:
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/012313.php
~snip~
EM: Well, speaking of that Senator, you’ve got a lot of commentary about your sober, realistic tone that you took in Indianapolis, yesterday or the day before, is that the type of campaign you want to bring to people to hear some tough truths to prepare us for the battles ahead?
FT: Well, let’s just say that the rah-rah stuff has its time and place and I’m not above a little of that from time to time but that’s not why I am where I am right now. Life is too short, the difficulties facing our country are too serious, not to tell the truth about what we’re going to have to do as a nation. It’s sober in a way but it’s optimistic in a way. It’s not optimistic not because of the world we see around us but because we think we can do something about it, that we can do better. That’s the source of my optimism. And I’m not going to shy away from the facts; I’m not going gear myself to try to get a party applause line every second or third sentence I make. Republicans and well as the rest of the American people need to come together on the fact that we have some tough choices ahead of us and the one thing that is not sustainable is our current path with regard to our attitude toward global conflicts and with regard to our attitude toward our economic future, current trends and our attitude with regard of what it’s going to take to do better; and that’s unity of the American people.
~snip~
Love it SE Mom.
Me too:)
This is vintage Fred:
“I’m not going gear myself to try to get a party applause line every second or third sentence I make.”
Thanks for the excerpt!
Iraq is not the war. Iraq is a part of the war. Iraq and Afghanistan are current fronts in a global war that I don’t think we yet totaling [sic] appreciate the dimensions of. How long it’s going to last, how much resources we’re going to have to commit to it and how resolute we’re going to have to be.
This guy “gets” it about the WOT...I like that.
Thompson Eyes Sunshine State With Randy Enwright, as national political director and Todd Harris as communications director, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson (who has yet to officially announce his presidential bid) is signaling a commitment to fight hard to win Florida, Harris said.
"Florida is going to play a critical role both in the primary and the general election, and it's important for any winning campaign to have a staff that understands the complexities of Florida politics," Harris said.
"I think you can also read into it that we think Florida is going to play an important part of our winning strategies," Harris said.
The Fred factor Fred Thompson's presidential campaign has got off to a shaky start
WHEN Michael Moore challenged Fred Thompson to a debate on health care, back in May, Mr Thompson declined the invitation but decided to have a bit of fun on YouTube instead. Sitting in a leather armchair and sucking on an unlit Cuban cigar, he lambasted Mr Moore, a conservative hate-figure if ever there was one, for his naive views on Cuba and its health-care system. Next time you're down in Cuba visiting your buddy Castro, he said, why not ask about another film-maker, Nicolás Guillén, who was put into a Cuban mental institution and subjected to devastating electric-shock treatment. “Mental institution, Michael. Might be something you ought to think about.”
Those were the glory days of Mr Thompson's campaign—or non-campaign—for the presidency. Republican activists, bitterly disappointed with their choice of candidates in the primaries, seized on Mr Thompson as the perfect alternative. A former senator from Tennessee who had earned national fame as an actor, particularly on the wildly popular “Law and Order”, an imposing man with a six-foot-six frame and deep bass voice, Mr Thompson was the sort of non-scary conservative who could rally the base without alienating the middle ground.
The not-quite candidate did a brilliant job of playing on the right's expectations. He produced pieces for conservative outlets sounding familiar themes: global-warming alarmists were flat-earthers, the Virginia Tech massacre proved that students should be allowed to carry guns on campus, and so on. He went on radio and television. He attracted enthusiastic crowds as he strutted around at various political functions. Some conservatives even began to pay him the ultimate compliment—comparing him to the sainted Ronald Reagan.
Mr Thompson had left the Senate to continue his career in Mr Reagan's old profession (where, as an added bonus, he played authority figures such as federal prosecutors and even presidents, rather than cowboys). And he was known as a genial chap who preferred to keep his nose some distance from the grindstone. His years in the Senate in 1994-2002, for example, produced few notable legislative achievements. His fans recycled some of the great Reagan one-liners, such as his reply to those who wondered how an actor could be president (“How can the president not be an actor?”) or his defence of his work habits (“They say hard work never hurt anybody, but I figure why take the chance?”).
The glory days are long gone. Mr Thompson's campaign has been racked by endless problems. The Los Angeles Times revealed that, in 1991, he lobbied on behalf of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. He lost several senior aides, including one on August 27th, amid accusations that his (much younger) wife is micromanaging his campaign. He raised a disappointing $3.4m in June. Lane Hudson, a former Democratic staffer, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, alleging that Mr Thompson was ignoring “the letter and spirit” of the law by running a full-blown campaign without formally declaring his candidacy.
Mr Thompson's biggest problem stemmed from what, at first, appeared to be a cunning strategy: running for president without declaring that he was running. He consigned himself to a political no-man's-land where he has been denied the perks of a traditional campaign (such as appearing in Republican debates), but has nevertheless attracted all the scrutiny of a regular candidate. He has almost no infrastructure in place in Iowa and New Hampshire at a time when some of his rivals have well-oiled machines. Mr Thompson's tactic might have paid off if he had declared a couple of months ago, perhaps when the Michael Moore video appeared. But now his formal announcement of his candidacy, which is expected any day, is bound to be an anticlimax. So much for an actor's sense of timing.
No Ronald Reagan
Mr Thompson still has a chance to turn his fortunes around—and even to turn himself into a front-runner. He regularly scores in the top division in opinion polls. He's been working out and slimming down, and his appearances in New Hampshire and Iowa quickly generate a buzz. And the Republican Party remains dissatisfied with its choice of candidates. Rudy Giuliani is a weak front-runner. One poll shows Mitt Romney with higher negatives than Hillary Clinton. John McCain, never popular with hard-core conservatives, is now reviled for his role in immigration reform (or “shamnesty”, as they prefer to call it).
But Mr Thompson's chances depend on the weakness of the field rather than any outstanding qualities of his own. The comparison with Reagan is instructive. Reagan was a conservative ideologue who spent decades working for “the movement”, acting as Barry Goldwater's champion and running for the Republican nomination on a conservative ticket in both 1976 and 1980. Mr Thompson was a pragmatic senator—a centrist by the standards of the Tennessee Republican Party—who voted for Mr McCain's campaign-finance reform. His enthusiasm for the pure milk of conservative dogma is a recent development. Reagan distilled his conservative philosophy into a stump speech that had Republican donors instantly opening their wallets. So far Mr Thompson's speeches have been a succession of conservative clichés interspersed with long pauses.
In the mid-1970s, when Ronald Reagan burst onto the national scene, the Republican Party was desperate for a new direction: not just because it had been discredited by Watergate, but also because it lacked a distinctive ideology. Reagan provided that new direction. Today the Republican Party is in dire straits again, but none of the candidates has even begun to chart a new path. That is unlikely to change when and if the Republican Party's newest actor-politician joins the race.
Right on Flash, you look like a candidate for http://Vets4Fred.net
Although, I know for a fact that not only Vets care about the WOT.
Thompson supporters to get informed on next steps Randy Enwright, the national political director of The Friends of Fred Thompson committee, has organized a 3 p.m. conference call today with top supporters to disclose the next steps Thompson will be taking, The City Paper has learned.
The call’s bottom-line will likely be the specifics on Thompson announcing his bid, which is expected to be sometime next week or the week after that.
Charlie Rose interviews Fred (Apr. 24, 1995) Video at link. He's saying the same things today that he said then!
Fred Out of the Gate on Sept. 6 So, the moment many have been waiting for is almost here. Fred Thompson will officially enter the race for the Republican nomination on Thursday, September 6. So says The Politico, anyway. That means Thompson will not participate at the GOP debate in New Hampshire on Sept. 5th, so we'll have to wait and see how he handles live fire from the other candidates for a little while longer.
The debate still rages as to whether or not Thompson waited too long to get into the race. Certainly, he's in a great spot in the polls. The question is, can live up to the hype? And can it be long before the Red Pickup comes out of the barn? And if you're curious about his voting record from his days as a United States senator, you might look here.
It'll be fun to watch how the TV lawyer does under cross-examination, that's for sure.
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