Posted on 01/05/2008 9:05:25 AM PST by pissant
Manchester (NH): Fred Thompson spent most of caucus night in Iowa hovering between third and fourth place -- a far cry from the lofty first-place position he held in Rasmussen's poll of likely Republican caucus-goers last June. It has been a long time since Thompson has made a compelling reason to be in this race. And it should be a very short time before he confesses a compelling reason to exit stage right. A bystander in his own race, Thompson's political what-could-have-been slipped through his fingers long before he announced his candidacy. “The process for running for president has begun so early,” says GOP political strategist Charlie Gerow, “that if you are not in the game, you are not in the game … and Fred Thompson was never in the game.” Larry Sabato, who directs the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, says “the biggest loser of 2008 is already known: Fred Thompson. The biggest pre-candidacy buildup since Ted Kennedy in the 1980 cycle has led to the same result -- a failure to come close to fulfilling his high expectations.” The short story of Fred Thompson started just about a year ago at the conservative love-fest known as the Conservative Political Action Convention, or CPAC. There, hints of a Thompson hat-toss began. By late spring, he was all the rage. He hit his high note with a clever video smacking down docudrama king Michael Moore. Suddenly, the political and media worlds could not get enough of Fred. It was his shining moment -- except that Fred forgot to shine. Summer came and went. So did a whole lot of staff and a whole lot of opportunities.
His eventual announcement in September came with a hefty price tag -- the Republican Primary voters in New Hampshire. He chose to announce on Jay Leno’s show, bypassing the first New Hampshire debate the same evening.
“He was an attractive idea, an image, and the reality couldn’t match it,” Sabato says. “This may be the fate of anyone touted as the next Reagan. Reagan is no longer a man. He’s a myth. No living human being can fulfill those expectations.”
“My opinion of what happened to Fred Thompson is that he turned out to be ... Fred Thompson,” adds Matt Lebo, political science professor at New York’s Stony Brook University.
“I don't think it’s just his late entry -- that is just a symptom of the problem,” Lebo says. “The problem is that he has never shown a willingness to fight for conservative causes. Believing in those causes isn't enough. There should be some evidence that you are willing to do something about it.”
While comparisons have been made to the failed 2004 campaign of Wesley Clark, those may not be fair. Clark was a political novice; Thompson is not.
So why did Thompson go wrong?
“I think he was expecting to ride in, pick up the bouquet, and that would be that,” says Bert A. Rockman, head of the political science department at Purdue University. “It doesn’t work that way.
“People confuse appearance with reality. Thompson played hard-as-nails authority figures on TV and in the movies. But his campaign had no distinctiveness, no comparative advantage.”
Somehow, someone must have convinced Thompson that times had changed and he could run a different kind of campaign, one that suited his low-key approach to politics. A campaign sans rubber-chicken dinners, moldy bus tours and all the other degrading aspects of running for president.
Tack on the misconceptions that tens of millions of dollars were waiting for him, that he could easily round up organizational support -- and that pretty much sums up why the promise of Fred never happened.
As the country shifts its gaze toward New Hampshire, Thompson stands to fare even worse here than he did in Iowa. As of Friday morning, he was polling sixth among likely Republican voters.
So, the near-term question for Fred Thompson isn't if he drops out of the race but when.
I got some real news for you. There are some evangelicals that vote democrat. There is not a shred of evidence that evangelicals would not support Fred Thompson any more than Hunter. Being an evangelical i can tell you that I am embarrassed over their support for Mike Huckabee.
You’re bearing false witness again.
***Let the readers decide for themselves, such as on this thread.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1948397/posts
Pro-life evangelical Huckabee fans will be welcome at Team Hunter. He’s pro-life. He’s evangelical. His followers don’t bash on cultural icons in the evangelical movement.
It's always been a clumsy and cumbersome forum with regard to posting and reading posts. The one Townhall place I've gone with any regularity has been Hugh Hewitt's site, and that's also been a real eye-opener politically. Down deep, I always had the sense that Townhall's creators saw Jim's Free Republic and what it could do and how it drew people together in an exciting and dynamic chorus of conversations, and said, "Thanks, Jim, we'll take it from here." I think they expected to dominate and figured that since they were professionals, they'd do better.
They were wrong.
Townhall is what it is. Alot of blogging, but also articles by some pretty good conservatives.
If it happened, I wouldn't be surprised. Hunter and McCain are military people first, and unless I'm mistaken, both are Navy guys. Loyalty rightly goes a long way in the military.
... the bull-headed, fanaticism-tinged detachment from reality of [Hunter's] supporters turns me off.
For me, that quality is one of the things I trust and like most in the genuine Hunter supporters because I know they are real patriots. It frustrates me because mathematically it can throw the balance to the wrong guys, but I must also admire it. I can only hope two things: that their investigations in to Thompson's record satisfy them, and that they carefully ponder the math.
Using the Iowa caucuses to predict anything is stupid. Ronald Magnus Reagan himself came in SECOND in Iowa in 1980. George Bush, Sr came in THIRD in 1988 and went to to take the oath of office as President the next January. Bill Clinton came in FOURTH in 1992 and went to to claim the Presidency. The Iowa caucuses are about as accurate a predictor of the nominee as a monkey at a typewriter.
If that's the tack you're going to take, then I'll counter with:
Romney comes off as a synthetic, narcissistic candidate.
I can only hope two things: that their investigations in to Thompson’s record satisfy them, and that they carefully ponder the math.
***Well, I’ll praise pissant. The guy is an ardent supporter, everyone knows it. In terms of pondering the math, today in Wyoming Hunter wins 2 delegates and so does Thompson. Hunter is the more conservative of the two. Hunter gets more bang for the buck than Thompson. Just like Huckabee got more bang for the buck than Romney in Iowa.
I’m looking forward to the results in New Hampshire.
He then stated that the reason we should elect him is because he has experience. He's just babbling.
He'll stay in at least until the So. Carolina primary (Jan. 19th). Gotta win there or it's over. Wouldn't count him out just yet, though.
It's worse than that.
He did find what Fred had said and misrepresented it.
Only a lunatic or a pandering liar would profess love for the process of campaigning for president, by all accounts a gruelling 24-7 mentally stressful, and often demeaning enterprise. Later in the same interview, unless I'm mistaken, Thompson added that he'd like to be president and thinks he'd make a good president.
If you're sitting out the primaries, I don't see how you can say that you're on anybody's side.
Nope. I'm liking Duncan or Rudy so far...
Yeah. Right, John. Millions believe you.
*rolls eyes*
Marking your post noting the differences between Hunter and Thompson.
Although I have not read the debate threads yet, I can be my bottom dollar they will be praising Freds performance, but to me he was a curmudgeonly old man. Not one of his answers were fundamentally different than anyone elses, yet they all seemed to say it in a better way.
Hear here! Well said, guy.
Never count out a politician until they've been embalmed and planted.
It wasn’t socialized health care in Mass. It was private health insurance. Do you consider auto insurance as socialized?
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