Posted on 11/04/2007 6:37:35 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I had said Fred Thompson could do him a lot of good if he passed “the Russert primary” with flying colors.
His campaign had been dismissing the Washington press corps, and implicitly running against the media, refusing to do the things candidates traditionally do (enter early, do five events a day, appear at the New Hampshire debate instead of the Tonight Show). But every once in a while a Washington media institution really does matter, and Meet the Press is one of them. Simply because Tim Russert, without commercial interruption, will throw hardballs and curveballs for a solid half hour, and standard delaying tactics won’t work. Also, his research staff can find every awkward quote from 1974 that every candidate dreads. Generally, a candidate who can handle Meet the Press well can handle just about any other live interview.
This morning I had caught a brief snippet – his discussion of Iraq - and thought he was striking out. I thought the reference to “generals we respect” was so odd, I wondered if he had forgotten David Petraeus’s name.
Having just watched it on the DVR, I thought it was a very, very solid performance. Ground rule double.
My initial shallow thought was that Thompson still looks a bit on the gaunt side. Then, during the interview:
“You’ve lost a lot of weight. Is it health related?”
“Coming from you, Tim, I’ll take that as a compliment.” Ouch. Thompson says no, it’s not health related, it’s just that his wife has him on a diet to watch his cholesterol. He says he had additional tests for his Lymphoma in September and was the results were all clear.
Every once in a while Thompson slipped up - I think he suggested that oil was selling at “nah-eight hundred dollars a barrel”, and I’m wary of his quoted statistic that car bombs in Iraq are down 80 percent – but overall, Thompson was measured, modest, serious, and completely at ease. After a couple of debates, it’s odd to watch a man not trying to squeeze his talking points into an answer, and instead speaking in paragraphs, conversational and informed.
Jen Rubin wrote, “He does not answer questions linearly with a direct answer to the question but rather talks about the subject matter. Some find this thoughtful and other think he is vamping and unfocused.” His talk on Iran was a perfect example, in that Thompson’s position isn’t terribly different from the rest of the field – he doesn’t want to use force, but he’ll keep that option open - but as he talks at length about the risks and benefits and factors that would go into a military strike, the audience, I think, will feel reassuring that if Thompson needs to face that decision, he will have weighed each option carefully.
That voice is fatherly, reassuring, calm. The contrast to Hillary couldn’t be sharper.
I’m going to say ‘well-briefed,’ but I know that will just spur one of the Thompson Associates to call me to tell me that’s not a sign of others briefing him, that’s a sign of Thompson’s own reading and study of the issues.
I was about to say that he was almost too conversational, that he could have used one quip or pithy summation at his views, and then, finally, at the tail end of his question on Schiavo, he summed up, “the less government, the better.”
I’m hearing that David Brody listened to the section on abortion and Thompson’s expression of federalism in this area, and has concluded, “all he needs now is to buy the gun that shoots him in the foot.” Look, if Fred Thompson isn’t pro-life enough for social conservatives, then nobody short of Mike Huckabee is. If Huckabee gets the nomination, great, I’d love to see Hillary Clinton go up against the Republican mirror-image of her husband’s rhetorical skills. But it feels like the past few months have been an escalating series of vetoes from various factions within the GOP. I’ve seen more amiable compromises on the United Nations Security Council.
Let me lay it out for every Republican primary voter. You support the guy you want, you rally for him, you write some checks, you vote in the primaries… and maybe your guy wins, maybe he loses. If the guy who beats your guy is half a loaf, you shrug your shoulders, hope your guy is his running mate, and get ready for the general. Life goes on.
Bottom line, I don't buy into your doomsday scenario that tolerance leads to perversion and culural decay. In my opinion, if you're a 'culture warrior' who pursues morality legislation (inviting the government into matters where liberty should trump), you are part of the problem with modern-day conservatism, in my book, and are causing the decay in liberties and freedoms.
What a buffoon you are.
Would that all FReepers who love their country would adopt this common-sense approach this election year.
BTTT. This is sage advice. What the Founders feared - political parties - has been part of the political landscape for 200+ years. It isn't ideal, but it IS reality. Either your party - where people generally believe as you do, even with some relatively minor disagreements - wins or the other party does - i.e. the party that is against virtually everything that you're for, and for virtually everything that you're against. For me, this is a simple choice, even if I'd never vote for the guy who gets the nomination in the primaries. Look to 1992 to see what happens when people break ranks - we not only got Slick Willy for 8 years, we got Senator Clinton and the possibility of ANOTHER 8 years (which will, IMHO, be FAR worse for our liberties).
Then you disagree with our party platform. (Assuming you are Republican.)
Well, simple observation would back my contention. Do you think there’s any chance of San Francisco becoming fiscally conservative anytime soon? Is “tolerant” Sweden going to ween itself from the nanny state? Is Canada, where social conservatives are outcasts, going to abolish national health care?
Has “tolerance” of homosexuality led to more government or less? It’s led to more, of course. In return for “liberating” homosexuals from those insidious sodomy laws, we now have laws banning private businesses from discriminating against homosexuals. We have laws forcing landlords to rent to them. We have forced homosexual indoctrination of our kids in the schools. We have private organizations being forced to change their moral beliefs to those of the state or risk being punished. We have nominees to government posts raked over the coals for refusing to expose their small children to homosexuality. We have speech codes and hate crime laws. We have private businesses being forced to provide services to homosexual “couples”.
In ther words, we have ten times as much government as we would have had if we had kept homosexuality closeted in the first place. Social liberalism (libertarianism) is just a form of soma, bread and circuses to the ignorant masses so they’ll capitulate all their most important rights (free speech, right to self government, property rights, religious liberty) to the state.
I don’t think I have ever bought into EVERY plank of any party’s platform at any time in the past 60 years. This is particular plank is a bit of rainbow pie for the fixated dreamers.
I’m still very much a Republican, but first and foremost I am a Conservative, and that means I rant a reduced federal government, not the more powerful, more intrusive one you would foist upon the rest of us.
Not true! Legislation and judicial matters for areas where one person's actions directly deprive another person of their liberties are needed. Then there is the matter of indirect depriving where the waters are a bit more murky but still need to be sorted out...with the emphasis always erring on the side of liberty through some judicial process and with follow-up legislation to codify a societal norm that strikes the optimal balance between preserving order and maximizing liberty.
In the case of abortion, the delicate balance (in my opinion) was decided at much too high of level of judiciary and the legislative portion will not be codified because the attitude of the majority do not see abortion as murder because they either do not really see it as such or because, for selfish reasons, it is inconvenient to see it as such. If you and other pro-lifers feel so strongly about this single-issue, where is your advocacy for adoption and for providing financial incentives to mothers of the unborn who contemplate abortion? Where is the trumpeting of non-profit groups who seek to facilitate adoptions and minimize the rates of abortions? If there are such efforts and organizations in place, then why do I not see promotion of them in your tag-lines? Are you single-issue people all talk?
And what of liberty? Why not defend the concept of liberty more and your public displays of outrage, piousness, and pitchfork wielding a little less?
One, I don’t agree that federal intervention in all your examples was warranted or beneficial.
Two, even when federal intervention was warranted, it generally did not require a Constitutional amendment, and such intervention was also supported by a fairly wide consensus.
Three, I don’t buy into hypotheticals like states legalizing murder. I know that there are many who equate abortion at every stage of pregnancy with murder. I do not. Feel free to disagree, but remember that some who have other items on their agenda, as I do, actually want to win an election from time to time, especially if it can be won by somebody who shares one’s limited government philosophy.
Life isn't a "social issue." It's a matter of existence.
Whether we protect life is the defining line between civilization and barbarism.
Finally...there’s the fact that overturning Roe has more likelihood of happening ...
I believe it is folks like Fred Thompson who are not serious about overturning Roe. If they were, they would stand for the only legitimate basis for throwing out the decision: the child's right to life. As the majority opinion in Roe admits, if the child has the right to life then the entire pro-abortion decision falls apart, and all states must respect that life per the Fourteenth Amendment.
Had we the right justices on the bench at that time, Roe would have gone the other way, and would have reinforced the constitutional requirement that all state laws respect life.
...than passing any sort of Constitutional amendment banning abortion in this current political climate.
There's no need for a constitutional amendment, so long as the unborn are recognized as already protected by the document (as defined in the Preamble). And amendment would simply clarify what is already in the document for those with reading difficulties.
But regardless of the legal method used to ban abortion, we won't get any step closer to that goal by electing spineless politicians.
I can see why Fred Thompson attracts supporters like you, who have no intention of banning abortion.
We also won’t get any closer by supporting unelectable politicians.
Intolerance caused more legislation, period! It is intolerance of another person's (group's) views that always enables more government intrusion. Those that enjoy the power to use government -- while their favorite enablers are at the helm -- should not be surprised to see the same power used against their convictions when the other enablers are at the helm. So, your question posed to me is too complex to answer because the causation you're inferring is screwy. We have forced homosexual indoctrination of our kids in the schools.
I support vouchers, thank you very much. And even would if a few parents wanted to take their kids to a school with a homosexual, satanic, communist curriculum.
We have private organizations being forced to change their moral beliefs to those of the state or risk being punished. We have nominees to government posts raked over the coals for refusing to expose their small children to homosexuality. We have speech codes and hate crime laws. We have private businesses being forced to provide services to homosexual “couples”.
All courtesy of the blunt instrument that likes to be wielded once our favored ass-hats are 'managing the people's affairs'.
In ther words, we have ten times as much government as we would have had if we had kept homosexuality closeted in the first place.
Then it's a good thing that Thomas Paine's behavior was well closeted then otherwise history could have been radically different.Social liberalism (libertarianism) is just a form of soma, bread and circuses to the ignorant masses so they’ll capitulate all their most important rights (free speech, right to self government, property rights, religious liberty) to the state.
It's funny that you speak of libertarianism with such authority and even use the word ignorant while doing so!
yes, I think Fred is too close to women in his life and thereby doesn’t want to upset them by saying he would be willing to criminalize abortion. I am very dissappointed and will probably be going for Romney or Hunter.
As a "Terri Schiavo person," I would say that removing the feeding tube is murder, just as starving/dehydrating to death anyone else would be murder. For Thompson to equate a feeding tube with life support is another red flag that he is either ignorant or knowingly on the wrong side.
On the question of federal involvement in the case, protecting life is one special situation in which the federal government must intervene if the local process fails. When a governor allows his police power to carry out a judicially-mandated murder, the only legal recourse is the feds.
We=less than 2% of the voting public.
Should helmet and seat belt laws be federalized? I mean, why not, the FDA protects terminally ill patients from ingesting medications that haven't met a rigorous testing regimen. Individual and family issues are much too important to be made by those individuals or families that are making them, right?
Succinct and brilliant!
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