Posted on 08/31/2007 5:41:48 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Fred Thompson has been acting like he has all the time in the world to get his campaign going, with his aides and advisers saying they wanted to get a first-class organization humming before the “Law & Order” actor steps out for his close-up.
One adviser, seeking to calm down an excitable reporter, even pointed out that “there will be two World Series” before the 2008 election.
But in fact Thompson – who plans to travel the country with his family in a luxury bus emblazoned with the words “Security, Unity, Prosperity” -- is in a race against time that even some of his core advisers admit he has a chance of losing.
Thompson had raised only a moderate amount of money – below his advisers’ expectations – when he finally filed his first financial statement with the Internal Revenue Service at the end of July.
The excuse was that donors were staying on the sidelines till he made it official.
Now Thompson needs the cash spigot to begin gushing as soon as he appears Thursday at Des Moines’ Polk County Convention Center. He needs to swiftly validate the premise of his campaign, which is that there’s pent-up demand among Republican donors and activists for some alternative to Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.
So Thompson’s deadline is not Election Day 2008, or even the January nominating contests.
The make-or-break date for his campaign is Sept. 30 – the Federal Election Commission cut-off for the next financial report. That document, which must be filed by Oct. 15, will determine Thompson’s fate. If he looks weak, he is unlikely to get the money, endorsements and grass-roots support that he’ll need to pull off his Houdini act, insiders say.
It amounts to a three-week, do-or-die sprint, and even Thompson does not claim to be a sprinter.
Critics in both parties had suggested that Thompson might try to game the system by not formally launching till Oct. 1 in order to avoid the third-quarter disclosure requirement.
But a Thompson official tells Politico: “The Thompson committee will file a disclosure report with the FEC on Oct. 15 covering all money raised and spent through Sept. 30.”
'We're prepared'
Thompson’s challenge is all the greater because he’s dallied for so long that he won’t get a honeymoon.
His advisers are convinced the press will unleash a blizzard of skeptical and hostile coverage to punish him for taking a nontraditional route to his candidacy.
People close to the campaign say a critical question is whether it was really necessary to begin campaigning two years before the election.
“Look, history could be written, and we got in too late,” said one close Thompson adviser. “We’re prepared for that. Or history could be written and we blew the whistle on this two-year project, and we can do it shorter and faster, and be the guys that end this madness.”
Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.), who was among the leaders in the House to push Thompson into the race, said Thompson's announcement of an announcement Thursday will provide a needed spark.
"It allows us to go ahead and firm up all these commitments from people who have said, 'If he runs I'm with him,'" Wamp said in a telephone interview from Tennessee after getting off a conference call with Thompson supporters on Thursday.
Wamp, who took a turn firing up supporters on the call, dismissed questions that Thompson's wait had harmed his prospects, but acknowledged that some Republicans had held back this summer.
"[The delay] caused certain people in grass roots and fundraising to say, 'I want a commitment,'" he said. "Well, now a commitment has taken place."
The pressure's on
Still, Thompson’s late money start, and his seeming acknowledgment in an interview with Politico.com last weekend that his summer cash haul had been disappointing, puts intense pressure on him to shake the money tree ferociously in September.
Thompson will hold a fundraiser in Chattanooga on Sept. 10, but other events are in the early states have yet to materialize. Thompson won’t raise cash in Iowa and the chairmen of the New Hampshire and South Carolina GOP said they had yet to hear any word about fundraising in their states.
Thompson is still interviewing consultants and aides and does not yet have a fundraising infrastructure in the early primary states.
“There is nobody here to do it,” said South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson. “And a good fundraiser will cost you 10 grand a month.”
Thompson’s need to ramp up his money machine is urgent, Dawson said. “When you come in with $3.5 million, you’ve opened yourself up to get pounded,” he observed, referring to the amount of money Thompson raised in June.
But Dawson emphasized that Palmetto State GOP voters were still undecided on a presidential pick.
“Hillary just scares the hell out of them down here. ‘Who can beat her’ is the question I get asked at every gas pump. Who can throw the Hail Mary and wield the veto pen.”
Thompson will underscore his independence from the rest of the field by appearing next Wednesday on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on the same night that the other GOP candidates are appearing on a Fox News debate moderated by Chris Wallace in New Hampshire.
On a conference call for reporters yesterday, Thompson political director Randy Enwright sketched the rest of the roll-out plans, which include “a grass-roots-oriented tour that will go to Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina.
“There will be a second tour that will be the tail end of next week, the 13th through the 15th. We’ll spend several days in Florida and end up in Tennessee for a welcome home party for the senator in his hometown of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., on the 15th.”
Jim Mills, the spokesman for Friends of Fred Thompson, said the organization has “great confidence that once the American people truly get to know Fred Thompson, they will be quite impressed with his life story and his intellect and his passion, and his seriousness for solving some of the big problems.
“This is a mature adult who has a sense of humor and can be self-effacing and truly loves to mix it up with real people,” Mills said. “Fred Thompson is going to surprise some people how engaged he is on some very serious issues.”
What you read was a letter that a Freeper wrote, saying that is the letter that Fred SHOULD have written in order to be included in the Sept. 5th debate. Then, the announcement at 4:30 yesterday was going to be what his intentions were. Fred's camp didn't say that he was going to ANNOUNCE then, though there was wild speculation here on FR and other places, to that effect.
Most of what folks are complaining about Fred not doing what he 'said' he was going to do, is based on speculation from the media, or some of his supporters who just wanted to get him in the race. I figured he'd announce when he deemed the time was right for him. Looks like he thinks Sept 6th is that date.
Well, when you ignore how campaigns have been run in the last two cycles and bring up JFK's campaign of nearly a half-century ago, I'd agree with LS. With TV prevalent, newspapers declining in readership and influence, the Internet, the geographic distribution of party strongholds entirely swapped about, the primaries 3 months sooner and front loaded, the union's power a shadow of what it was, and the fact that JFK didn't win it in the primaries, but in a brokered convention, I'd say it's somewhat different today.
Other than that, I guess Fred is as well positioned as JFK was against Adlai Stevenson. But, then again, he isn't running against Stevenson.
This is 100% incorrect -- Thompson voted to table, i.e., kill, an amendment by Kerrey, Boxer, Feingold, Daschle, Kennedy and Biden that would have eliminated language that prohibited the president from cutting nuclear weapons below START levels.
It's convoluted, but that's no excuse for On the Issues to get it so wrong. Here's a link to the vote:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=106&session=1&vote=00149
I have seen more cars with Thompson stickers than even Hillary stickers here in Memphis. It took a lot longer for the Bush ones to show up and he announced at the same time as others.
Consider that Clinton revolutionized how you do a "political" presidency by running a constant, NEVER-ENDING "campaign," starting immediately after he got elected in 1992. The Republicans never got this. Apparently, some still haven't. We are finished with the days when a candidate can come in relatively late, with no organization, and hope to do well. Now, CURRENT EVENTS could cause an upheaval in one direction or another, but barring that, it's LATE in the game.
Didn’t work for Howard Dean. The fact is, you still need personal contact of some sort, if for no other reason to find out WHO to target with your campaign efforts. For example, if you rely on people responding to cyber messages, well, 95% of the people don’t respond. So does that mean your campaign must target 95% of the people? Pretty silly, especially in a PRIMARY, where you are only going after the “uber Republicans” who always vote.
A primary IS the time to support YOUR choice in candidate - polls be damned. You have every right - no, every duty to be true to your purpose.
Also, posters should study the difference between spirited criticism of the substance of a post and a personal attack on the poster. The latter gains one nothing.
I don't know how anyone can apply history---and I'm a professional historian---when, by moving the primaries up a good six months, it renders null and void old methods of doing things.
Howard Dean is a great example: he relied on all flash and not substance. He got headlines by touting his internet campaign of "young people," but they don't vote, and they ESPECIALLY DON'T VOTE in primaries. Beleive it or not, it is the blue hairs who vote in the primaries: the party activists that go to all the BBQs, call-a-thons, lit drops, and dinners. They run the party organizations, the wards, the precincts; they staff all the offices and phones; they conduct all the statistical analysis; and they know all the gossip of why one candidate appeals to people and another doesn't. This is stuff you absolutely have to be on the ground to judge.
This article is from “Politico”.
Isn’t that the same source of the “July 4th” rumor?
The recipe for this particular article wouldn’t in part, perhaps include some measure of sour grapes?
“He hasn’t done it. What should I infer?”
That the man is NOT yet ready for prime time. His own campaign announced the reason is because they need more time to prepare Thompson and get their sh*t together. And most of it was probably spent convincing him to run.
Who wants to elect a man who isn’t even sure he wants to BE president?
“What is your point? You obviously disagree with me, yet you make no statements of your own. You simply (attempt to) insult me. If you contradict anything that I have said please at least let me know why.”
S.O.P. with the Fredheads.
It is a different campaign, Fred is on the ground shaking hands, answering questions, doing the things a candidate does, BUT he re-enforces that with his almost daily blog on the net.
I said it in April, this is going to be a very different kind of campaigning. This is going to be a YouTube campaign.
These are just some fo Fred's 'visits' in the last few months. He does have 'boots on the ground'.
These early visits, coupled with his messages posted on the Imwithfred website portray all his views on a variety of subjects. Look at the other candidates. are they as prolific? Hardly. As a historian, you of all people, should be looking back on how things were done compared to the use of the advances in technology and how Fred utilizes them now.
Didn't JFK do the same with the Giancana mob in Chicago - use them. Some observers say it was Sam Giancana's help in fixing ballots in Chicago that got Kennedy elected, and in exchange a Kennedy justice department was to be hands off the mob. Of course, John Kennedy got his brother Bobby appointed to head Justice, and the rest is history as Bobby went after the mob anyway. I wonder if this is true?
When people distort and lie about Fred Thompson's record, that isn't Fred Thompson's misdeed. That's quite rightly blamed on the person doing the distorting and lying. Nobody bothers to distort or lie about Duncan Hunter's record, because he's so inconsequential that nobody needs to bother.
You know, I don’t think you are a very nice person, talking as you do about a fine man like Rep. Hunter. Rep. Hunter has no enemies on either side of the aisle, in or out of politics, because he is a completely honorable man and high respected by his colleagues and friends.
Well, I KNOW from your past postings and persistent moonbattery that you aren't a very nice person. (And that's putting it mildly.) Calling his campaign efforts a failure isn't calling Duncan Hunter names: It's stating a fact. Mentioning that Duncan Hunter doesn't bother to show up for work much isn't an insult, it's a fact. Pointing out Duncan Hunter's outrageous pork barrel spending isn't an attack, it's the truth.
It just so happens that I'm a very nice person. I just don't take kindly to paranoid, delusional, fantasies masquerading as reality.
No one calls FDT disrespectful names. They just state his record.
LOLOLOL!!!!! That's funny! You missed your calling as a comedy writer.
Excellent post. 100% of it.
“I believe no one should donate a penny more until the moment of his actual announcement. Then, lay it on fat and thick.
That’s my plan.”
Ditto
John Leland 1789 wrote: “I really don’t understand the gripe about Mr. Thompson’s timing and announcements and all that. He is not late, when you look at the history of political campaigns. Just because others jumped in early doesn’t men (sic) Fred Thompson is late.”
John, there’s always a lot of peer pressure to go with the pack, even when the pack is running full speed off a cliff.
I see my hands wrote: “Who are we supposed to unify with?”
A good start would be for conservatives of various stripes, independents and Reagan Democrats to unify. The traitorus American Left has already unified with the Islamofacists, international socialists and communists. It’s us against them. Lock and load.
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