I think Fred Thompson was too much of a McCain follower when he was in the Senate.
Fred Thompson will be an interesting candidate. When he was running for the Senate, he wouldn't come out and declare himself as pro-life, but his votes were consistently good on the issue. I think he could hold many of the pro-life voters in the party, but he would lose some of them. In that sense, he's kinda like McCain.
Fred Thompson hurt himself with Republicans and conservatives when he was chairing that committee looking into illegal campaign contributions by the Chinese to Clinton/Gore '96. He should have stayed on target and nailed the Clintons on taking illegal contributions. If he had done that, we might have been able to impeach Clinton on bribery charges. Instead, he took the whole committee into some nonsense study of campaign finance reform. The general conclusion was that we needed all that McCain-Feingold nonsense.
Another factor that will hurt him is that he's one of the senators who voted against impeachment. If we'd impeached that piece of trash Clinton, we wouldn't be worried about Hillary getting the Democrat nomination in '08. We weren't close to the two-thirds needed to convict, but his failure to vote for impeachment is a stain on his performance as a senator.
Outside these details, I don't dislike Fred Thompson. I don't remember where he stood on illegal immigration. I'm afraid that he would support various amnesty plans as McCain does, and in supporting amnesty, he shows himself to be weak on border security. Anyone who is weak on border security is also weak on national security. I think he'd be good enough on tax issues. He wouldn't stand up against spending as we need, but I'm not sure that anyone else will either. He'll do well enough on the Second Amendment although his campaign finance reform stands make him suspect in the minds of most pro-gun and pro-life voters. I think he'd appoint pretty good judges to the Supreme Court.
If Rudy Giuliani weren't in the race, he'd probably be a frontrunner from the moment he entered the race. His masculinity gives him the illusion of being conservative, and that might put many conservatives in his camp. His being an actor would draw people who don't really pay attention to the details, and there many people who are too shallow to understand the issues but will vote for someone they like from TV. If Fred Thompson ran with someone like J.C. Watts as his running mate, he'd be much more likely to win than any combination that included either John McCain or Rudy Giuliani.
Bill
PS. He's the only candidate that I've actually met. The fact that I've met him doesn't change the fact that I'd rather have Duncan Hunter, maybe Tommy Thompson, maybe Newt Gingrich, or maybe even Mitt Romney in the White House.
F. Thompson is on record voting against at least one amnesty.