I agree, Fred`s ugly and old. Reagan was just old. But like Reagan, Fred is a conservative, with intellect, veracity, integrity and gravitas.
The first real test for Fred is raising enough money to keep his campaign alive. Knocking off Rooty comes second. The general election is 13 months away. Polls showing Hillary beating Fred are worthless at this point.
Shhhhh...... The Mittwits and Rudites have to have their illusions.
To which I would add, . . .and wit. From his 'I know what I'm going to do' instantaneous reaction to the odious Michael Moore's debate challenge, that gave us the self-scripted 38 second spot, to his remark about having rejoined the ranks of the politicians at his NRA speech, to his 'you just summed up my whole speech' reply on the stump, Fred has been the only candidate to deploy humor and irony the way Reagan used to.
Oddly, this should not be underestimated: the left takes itself so d*amned seriously that they by and large can't deploy wit. And, the worse for them, they've all bought into the Dick Morris model of parsing every sentence to make sure it appeals to some constitutent group, so even if one of them was capable of being witty, they wouldn't dare. Reagan always connected with the vast majority of Americans whenever he used his sense of humor, and I think Thompson will (is) do(ing) the same.