Nobody I have seen who supports either Fred Thompson or Ron Paul has failed to address criticism of their candidates. In fact I have seen many such supporters reveal such criticism to be frivolous.
Fact is that at the grassroots level Ron Paul is a phenomenon and at the primary level Fred Thompson is widening his lead.
All the former ‘tiered’ candidate supporters get cross-eyed when they see the success of Ron Paul and Fred Thompson so they start making stuff up to criticize them with. When their arguments are shown again and again to be weak, they ignore the rebuttals and keep on repeating the same tripe arguments. For example, you will hear them say Fred Thompson was prochoice when he never was. Their evidence is weak, nonconclusive and out of context. It doesn’t matter to them. So why do they persist? Because they fear their guy/gal will lose.
So yes, it’s about fear and fright. It’s not about avoiding the issues.
Then you haven't been paying attention. The vast majority of replies are one liner "Fear the Fred" type comments. Most of the rest are cut-n-paste advocacy rips from some site or another, reams of text that doesn't address the point. Very, very few are cogent, crafted responses to direct questions or on point rebuttals.
OTOH, I am talking about real, valid criticisms, not the spin attacks such as you refer to. Those are also mostly cut-n-paste hatchet jobs.
Nevertheless, the bulk of the postings about every (R) candidate on FR consists of dialog at the "My ol' man can beat up your ol' man" level of discourse. The same tired, old attack graphics, the same out-of-context quotes, the same juvenile ad hominums, thread after thread.