I love this from the article: "The Washington Post discovered that an anti–Fred Thompson smear site, entitled PhoneyFred.org, was being run by an executive of TTS Strategies. The site was immediately taken down; Romney made pains to distance himself from it, and so—much less believably—did Tompkins, who claimed an employee (Wesley Donahue) had conceived and run the site without his knowledge.
Whatever the truth of the site’s origin, the PhoneyFred episode perhaps most vividly showed that when one is contemplating how to sell Mitt Romney, the problem of phoniness can never be far from the brain." 
Fredheads remember THIS incident well.