Fredipedia: The Definitive Fred Thompson Reference
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Posted on 12/21/2007 9:57:49 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Waterloo, Iowa Forty-five minutes before Fred Thompson spoke here last Tuesday night, young volunteers greeted reporters and potential Iowa voters just inside the front door of the Waterloo Center for the Arts. A thermometer down the street reported the temperature as 22 degrees, and the wind made it colder. Even inside, the frigid air gave those manning the registration table an icy blast every time anyone opened the door.
A young man with a "Fred Thompson" button stood by a table with coffee and hot tea. He introduced himself to another volunteer, and they chatted about their reasons for supporting the former senator from Tennessee. It was a ritual that has played out countless times across Iowa--something Mitt Romney's volunteers were probably doing more than a year ago.
After the candidate and his wife, Jeri, arrived and were introduced, Thompson took the stage. He warmed up his audience with a joke about the weather. It's freezing back in Washington, too, he assured them.
"It was cold--it got so cold that the politicians had their hands in their own pockets," he said. People laughed out loud. Over the next 25 minutes, Thompson portrayed himself as a limited-government conservative whose values are in line with Iowa Republicans. He boasted about his endorsement the day before by Steve King, the conservative Republican who represents Iowa's Fifth District. He pointed to a column by the Des Moines Register's David Yepsen, the state's most influential columnist, saying Thompson could still excite conservatives. And he delivered the kind of conservative message many in the crowd said they'd been waiting for since the campaign began.
Much of the speech was the political equivalent of chum. On national security: "The best way out of the fight is to be stronger than your adversary." On the Democrats: "the left-wing, big government, high taxing, weak-on-national security Democratic party." On his Republican opponents: "You're not electing a set of plans, you're electing a leader."
Thompson made much of his strong showing at the last Republican debate, when he refused the moderator's request for a show of hands on global warming. The other candidates, he reminded the crowd, followed his lead. "I don't know how you're going to stand up to leaders of Iran and North Korea if you can't stand up to an overbearing moderator." More applause.
After taking several questions from the audience, Thompson asks the crowd for its support on caucus night, then makes his way into the crowd to shake hands. As he chats with voters, Dierks Bentley's "Free and Easy Down the Road I Go" comes blaring from the sound system.
Ain't no tellin' where the wind might blow Free and easy down the road I go Livin' life like a Sunday stroll Free and easy down the road I go Free and easy down the road I go
If you only get to go around one time I'm gonna sit back and try to enjoy the ride
If the Republican nomination were decided only by performances like this, Fred Thompson--whose policy views make him the most mainstream conservative in the race--would be on a glide-path to the Republican nomination.
It's not. And it is Thompson's lackluster effort in all of those other areas of a campaign that has him running a distant third in most polls less than two weeks from the Iowa caucuses. But a strange set of circumstances--the two current Iowa frontrunners cutting each other apart and two former national frontrunners essentially skipping the caucuses--means that despite his late start Thompson may still have a chance to emerge from Iowa as one of three or four candidates with a real shot at the nomination.
"Iowa is critical to our campaign, and it may in fact be everything to our campaign," says a Thompson official. "If we don't do what we need to do in Iowa, it will be tough to compete effectively down the road."
From the beginning, Thompson said he would run a different kind of campaign. He shared his philosophy about the process in an interview at his McLean home shortly after he first acknowledged publicly that he was considering a bid.
"The world changes so rapidly and politics do too," he said. "And not only has technology changed, but now a lot of the primaries have changed, and the question is whether the old way of looking at things still applies to these new sets of circumstances in all cases. I don't think they do."
You mean in terms of timing?
"Well, in terms of everything. In terms of timing, in terms of the role of money, in terms of the timing of the money, in terms of all the steps that you traditionally need to make and when you need to make them. The conventional wisdom, from all I can tell, is that you need years of preparation. And if that's the case, I'm already out."
He continued by offering an analogy.
You know, Winston Churchill used to spend most of his day, I guess a good part of it, in bed dictating, even in the height of the war. If I remember history correctly, he would dictate, you know, have a cigar and a brandy and--the good old days--and dictate. I saw one time a history thing, history program that interviewed his secretary who was obviously an elderly lady. And Winston would dictate just page after page after page after page. In the height of the war, he'd get up at 1 o'clock and go on about his business. But the point is, and she said, it's hard to believe, and she said for every hour of speech he made, he prepared ten hours. So at the height of the war, when everybody's scrambling around and everybody panicking and you can imagine the meetings that were being held, his emphasis was on the communications to the British people. And what do we remember? Those meetings? Scrambling around? No, we remember those phrases and we remember how he inspired those people. We still, when we get a chance, we listen to the exact words he used.
And, you know, different times, totally different circumstances, different country. But there's a grain of something there that everybody who aspires to be a leader ought to keep in mind.
Before his speech in Waterloo, Thompson spent part of his afternoon in Waverly, Iowa, population 9,000. He rolled into town on a rock 'n' roll style tour bus with an oversized picture of him on the side. It read: "The Clear Conservative Choice: Hands Down." His driver pulled up in front of the modest one-story building that houses the Waverly Democrat. Across the street, several stores sit empty. The "Sub-City" sandwich shop, located in an old gas station, is closed. The Pepsi sign in front looks like it has been there since the 1950s. A small group of Waverly citizens have waited in the cold for twenty minutes to meet the former senator.
When the door to the bus swings open, Thompson's wife, Jeri, emerges first. She skips down the stairs and thrusts her hand toward the first person she sees. "Hi, I'm Jeri Thompson," she says cheerfully, offering a warm smile. Fred follows her lead. As he lumbers toward the door of the newspaper's headquarters, he makes small talk with those who have come to see him. He is cordial, even friendly, but his wife outshines him.
After a quick meeting with the staff of the newspaper, Thompson climbs aboard the bus for the four-block drive to the gleaming new building that houses the fire department. He and Jeri walk down the line of firemen assembled to greet him. When someone presents him with a fireman's helmet to wear for a photo-op, Thompson holds the helmet away from him to get a good look at it and laughs. "I've got a silly-hat rule that I'm about to violate," he says, raising it toward his head before thinking better of it. "I ain't gonna do it," he says, laughing.
"I'll put it on," Jeri says with a wide grin. "I'll be the good sport. I get lots of points for this, guys." And indeed she did; the firemen laughed along with her as they posed for pictures.
Thompson paused for a few more pictures on his way back to the bus. Brad Gade, an insurance representative from nearby Cedar Falls, asked Thompson to autograph a "Days of Thunder" DVD box, and "Big John" obliges. Gade says he is a conservative Republican who recently decided to caucus for Thompson on January 3. He says Thompson seems "down to earth and easy to relate to." That's something he hasn't found in other candidates. "I looked a lot at Huckabee--but that recent stuff that's come out. . . " What stuff? "He's so heavily into religion," says Gade, wrinkling his nose. "Not my cup of tea."
Later, I spoke to Scott and Chelle Adkins, a young couple from Waterloo. Chelle is the secretary of the Blackhawk County Republican party, and Scott has had a leadership position with the party, too. Like Brad Gade, they have considered other candidates. "Mitt Romney came close for me," says Scott. "But there was just something missing. Huckabee appeals because of social issues, but I'm not so sure about fiscal issues."
Chelle jumps in. "A month ago, Huckabee looked like he might be a great candidate. But the more I research his positions, the less comfortable I become." I asked her for specifics. "Two things--illegal immigration and the taxes. I'd seen lots of advertising on how he raised taxes, how he was for a cigarette tax. I was really turned off on illegal immigration, too."
"You can't trust what you get from the media," Scott said, as I furiously took notes. "So we researched it."
The ads they're talking about are Mitt Romney contrast ads, designed to paint Huckabee as soft on crime and illegal immigration and liberal on taxes. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence--now backed by some polling--that suggests they're accomplishing that much. But is Romney peeling voters away from Huckabee and sending them toward Fred Thompson?
Thompson advisers are counting on it. They believe a slice-and-dice fight on the ground here creates an opening for their candidate, though Thompson has very little money to spend on paid media. Instead, he is running around the state talking to every talk radio host who will have him on and dropping by small-town newspapers with the hope that they will run stories about the visit.
The priority, these advisers say, is getting Iowans to connect Thompson's well-known face with his name. This worked in Tennessee when Thompson first ran for Senate, and they think it could help them again in a much smaller state. Even his bumper stickers have a picture of the candidate.
So in the end, it could mostly come down to Fred, which is how he envisioned it even before he decided to run.
"Most of these campaigns are still the candidates," he said. "The money, the organization, the preparation--all that's very important, but it's less than 50 percent. The most of it puts on one pair of shoes every morning and goes out. And it's important that that person knows exactly what they're doing."
Free and easy down the road he goes.
Fredipedia: The Definitive Fred Thompson Reference
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Nah, too lazy and late for that...
Right?
Perhaps the media realizes they can no longer ignore Fred as they have done to this point. Fred has a way about him that people like and he is out there talking to the people. Sounds like a winning strategy to me.
Go, Fred.
I personally think he should ditch the rock star tour bus, and get back in the ol’ pickup. It would definitely help with the old-timer Iowa farmers. His beautiful wife will help, as well.
I certainly hope he catches a tailwind in Iowa. I’d LOVE to see a second-place finish, or at least a strong third.
I just have to think that common-sense people will try to imagine who will do the best debating Shrillery. Mitt would take four minutes to regurgitate every one of his canned, nuanced policy positions, and Shrillary would shred him with negativity.
But Fred would coolly, calmly deflect her shrill sharpness with straightforward common sense and folksy humor. He just comes across as a genuine, likeable guy.
Great article. The race continues to be wide open and unpredictable.
Keep up the good work, Sen. Thompson.
You Might Be a Fredhead If... Posted by Frank J.
I was thinking that maybe some people should be Fred Thompson supporters but aren't. It's crazy. Maybe they just believe they have to support a candidate who is teh suck and don't know they have any other choice. So I was thinking I could make a list so that people could realize they really are Fred Thompson supporters and might just not know it yet.
You might be a Fredhead if......you blame America last.
...you kinda like it when terrorists are made uncomfortable.
...you think that today's serious foreign policy issues will take more than hillbilly charm and naiveté to handle.
...you suspect the Iran might actually be up to something.
...you prefer movies where American troops are the good guys.
...you think a Senate majority leader who constantly tells us how things are doomed while a war is still ongoing needs a good bitch-slapping.
...you think it's great if a murderer finds God, but that doesn't mean he should be let out of prison.
...you think America's sovereignty is kinda important.
...you think anyone who talks about how the rich aren't "paying their fair share" is a whiny little Communist.
..."great hair" is low on your list of presidential requirements.
...you think someone didn't draw those border lines on a map just for fun.
...call you crazy, but you'd prefer a presidential candidate who actually shares your conservative views.
...you think it's time someone did something about the hippies.
...you'd like Osama bin Laden's next video to be him pleading, "Someone please help me!" before he's pummeled on screen by the U.S. president.
Well, that's what I came up with so far. If you have some other ways people could tell they might be a Fredhead, put them in the comments.
Do it now!
Churchill was plagued with depression his whole life and often wouldn't get out of bed until afternoon. This worsened during WWII. Upon finally arising Churchill would typically proceed to drink to excess before falling asleep again.
These are not exemplars that Fred Thompson should be citing during a presidential campaign.
In a proper campaign aides would jump on him, wrestle him to the ground and drag him from the room when he starts talking crazy talk like that.
I wish there was a way for the Fred supports in Iowa to think up a way to find a way to help Fred get some TV ads that are not expensive in Iowa.
A wise man once said he would be worried if Fred WASN'T behind in the polls before the election. It's Fred Thompson, remember! Now if I could just remember who that was . . . . ;)
You might be a Fredhead when you can actually understand what Fred is saying in clear, no forked tongue, real conservative language, and can discern when listening to the other candidates that what they are saying is counterfeit, fake conservatism.
If enough Iowans are exposed to the real Fred like this, he might just pull it off. GO FRED!
Oh my...are you actually thinking that Fred says the words “winston Churchill” and the average voter thinks “drunk guy who wasn’t worth anything”?
When told that General Grant drank whiskey to excess, Lincoln replied, "I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals."
TV ads are good but being in all of these small towns and being on the nightly news at 6:00 and 10:00 every night, carries more weight, I would think, than those pesky political ads every 30 seconds.
If Fred finishes in the top 3 in Iowa, he can keep going. I think South Carolina will be his “Waterloo”; make it or break it.
I think so too. There does seem to be quite a disparity between GOP sentiment as reflected in polls (including Rasmussen), and FR. The question is, is FR that out of touch with the GOP, or is FR a leading indicator?
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/poll?poll=206;results=1
Members
Thompson 74.7% 867
Romney 10.9% 127
Giuliani 5.9% 68
Huckabee 5.2% 60
McCain 3.4% 39
100.1% 1,161
Oh my...are you actually thinking that when Fred says the words “Winston Churchill” tht the average voter thinks “drunk guy who wasn’t worth anything”?
Exactly what I was thinking!
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