He also voted against a McCain Amendment 2294 to increase disclosure requirements.
Go Fred Go!
Stop it. Only Romney isn’t allowed to ever change his position. Thompson can change his mind all he wants.
After all, he’s an actor, so maybe he was just playing the part of being McCain’s biggest supporter.
Related:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1601416/posts
John McCain, you treasonous bastard, I challenge you or any of your traitorous cohorts...
Excerpt:
Your McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation is a treasonous act. You and your cohorts are attempting to subvert the Constitution of the United States of America, the very same constitution that you swore an oath to defend, so help you God! That makes you a domestic enemy of that great document and a traitor to your country. Yes, and Benedict Arnold was a war hero before he turned traitor too.
How dare you even think that you are qualified to sit in the oval office! Ronald Reagan’s office! President? Hah! You miserable excuse for a two-bit political hack, you’re not even qualified to shine Ronald Reagan’s boots. If you do run, I’m afraid you’re gonna be at least one vote short. It’ll be a cold day in hell before a traitor like you ever receives my vote. And that’s a campaign promise you can take to the bank.
You can take your fascist campaign finance laws and the jackbooted FEC anti-free-speech enforcers you are empowering and put them where the sun don’t shine. And if this post is in violation of your unconstitutional law, shove it too!
BTTT
Related:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/1897132/posts
Fred, Lies, and Audiotape
Excerpt:
Laura: What about the issue ads?
Fred: Well, that’s a different story, I’ll get to that in a minute. But my main motivation for CFR - the issue ads thing wasn’t even being discussed as far as I remember when the first debates were had and when the first bill was proposed - it was a matter of whehter or not you wanted to get rid of soft money. Bill Clinton and Dick Morris showed that you could use soft money in ways that people thought you’d get put in jail for a short time ago. So they poured it in, instead of having the agreed upon limitations that have historically democrats, republicans, conservatives and liberals and everybody else pretty much acknowledged were constitutional, because it had to do with federal elections, and the idea that you don’t wanna give too much money to any individual member of congress then come lobbying him for a bill. That’s called bribery in the real world. But they came in with this soft money to do the same thing, through the backdoor. We wanted to do away with that. Now they added on something that was a mistake. And that is the issue ads you were talking about, and I voted for all of it, so I support the first part, but I don’t support that.
As Will pointed out, this was very disingenuous, citing that this language regarding issue ads and time restrictions had been around a long time, and was not some late addition. In fact it originated in 1997. CFR did not pass until 2001. This egregious slap at the constitution was called the Snowe-Jeffords Amendment, added to the CFR legislation language in 1998. It became part of the base language for this legislation years before the final passage in 2001. And guess what? The amendment had OTHER sponsors as well, not just Snowe and Jeffords. They include one Fred Dalton Thompson. From the Congressional Record:
More
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/1897132/posts
For all the NRA folks there is something in the CFR that also effects the gun laws does anyone have a complete copy of this CFR?
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/235093.aspx
Dr James Dobson pans Fred Thompson:
“Isn’t Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a Constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won’t talk at all about what he believes, and can’t speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?” Dobson wrote.
“He has no passion, no zeal, and no apparent ‘want to.’ And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!”
I asked on another thread, plaintively: What are our options?
Go with Romney, who, while he may not be Reagan, is at least attempting the style and conservative platform?
Stick with Thompson and hope he’s just playing tortoise to Hillary’s/Rudy’s Hare?
Go with favorite 1% candidate and don’t worry about practicality of it?
That's why I feel that Duncan Hunter is the only man for the job! We desperately need him to straighten things out in America.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Daily Breeze ( Torrance , CA )
November 1, 1997
Panel to end hearings on fund-raising - Senator proud campaign finances were pushed into spotlight
Author: Francis X. Clines
WASHINGTON — With a tone of frustration at the obstacles he faced, Sen. Fred Thompson put an end to the Senate’s hearings on campaign finance abuses Friday, complaining that he had not been afforded enough time to do a thorough job.
“I am disappointed we will not be able to lift the restriction of the cutoff,” the senator said, referring to the Dec. 31 deadline set by the Senate, controlled by Republicans, for finishing the inquiry he led this year as chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee.
“I will not be holding hearings just for the sake of holding additional hearings,” said Thompson, R-Tenn., while claiming qualified success in “re-energizing” the Justice Department inquiry into campaign abuses and helping to force the campaign overhaul issue onto the Senate agenda next year.
“We’ve had the first real substantive debate on campaign finance reform in 20 years,” Thompson said. “We played a part in that, and I’m proud.
“Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., one of the most vocal Democratic critics on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said the hearings collapsed on a faulty foundation of “exaggerated charges and false leads.”
“Senator Thompson never had the support of the Republican leadership in this investigation. The leadership always was more concerned that intimidating information would be found about them and (the hearings would become) not just about inflicting damage on President Clinton,” Torricelli commented.
Thompson’s decision to forgo further public sessions brings a less than dramatic close to hearings that began sensationally in July with a promise to delve into accusations that the Chinese government had a plan to influence some United States elections last year.
While that charge stands unproven, the consuming issue of campaign finance abuses is far from finished in this political city, as it awaits next year’s round of big-money congressional campaigning.
As Thompson made his announcement, Rep. Dan Burton, chairman of a parallel inquiry by the Republican-led House, immediately promised to maintain the focus on the White House by resuming his own aggressively open-ended campaign hearings next week.
In addition, Attorney General Janet Reno faces a series of deadlines in the next four weeks related to the possible appointment of an independent counsel who would have wide powers to investigate fund-raising practices by President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.
The Justice Department’s separate criminal inquiry into accusations of campaign abuses has increasingly become a focus of attention as a result of the Senate committee’s airing of various accusations of schemes to launder political money and barter access during the elections last year.
“Watergate, I guess, spoiled us a little bit,” Thompson said of what he deemed unrealistic demands to produce “the smoking gun” from among the widespread big-money solicitation practices the committee looked into in 32 days of public hearings on the financing of the presidential campaign.
“It’s a big, malleable mess,” he said in one of several interviews Friday, as he summarized the difficulty of catching the public’s attention with the complex scandal accusations. “It’s a bunch of different scandals all intertwined, but it has no consistent story line.”
Democrats, to the last minute of the last hearing, accused Thompson of a partisan focus on Clinton ‘s campaign. But they conceded Friday that the Senate hearings had stoked the pressure on Congress to consider revamping the arcane, often unenforceable, laws governing campaign fund raising.
“I’m glad the hearings are over,” said Sen. John Glenn of Ohio , the ranking committee Democrat who dueled daily with Thompson at the hearings. “We made more people around the country aware of some of the problems, albeit not on a bipartisan basis, as I had hoped.
“Both sides do it and it’s wrong,” he added, looking toward the vote on curtailing campaign spending that the Republican Senate leadership was forced to agree to after recent weeks of obstructive tactics by pro-reform members.
The White House had a similar reaction. “Now it’s time to move on to the next stage of the process, which should be an up-or- down vote, then final passage, of bipartisan, comprehensive campaign-finance reform,” said Barry Toiv, a White House spokesman.
Thompson said that while he would be concentrating on writing the inquiry’s final report by the end of the year, the committee staff would continue investigating some open questions with the White House, like phone logs and campaign videotapes that recently came to light. He said the committee would remain subject to his call, with the possibility of further hearings.
The chairman left little doubt, however, that the hearings were effectively closed. “We do not have the caliber of witnesses and information” on hand to justify further sessions, he said.