Posted on 06/09/2007 8:54:36 AM PDT by hardback
There are any number of reasons why people love Fred Thompson and why he should win the 2008 Election should he run for President of the United States. But for right now, let’s start with why he is especially unique.
Fred Dalton Thompson is perhaps the best example of what it takes to belong to an exclusive fraternity of people who have been through the revolving door leading from politics to Hollywood and back. But unlike the late-great Jack Valenti, he wasn’t just a lobbyist in a nice suit and unlike Ben Stein, he’s not merely a speechwriter who went on to say “Bueller, Bueller, Bueller,” hock eyedrops and challenge you to win his money on television.
And although Thompson is being compared to the so-called “Great Communicator” Ronald Reagan, you don’t have to dig through old black and white movies or Cold War era revisionist history texts to find him. You can catch him on cable and network TV re-runs probably right up through the election. Lastly, unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, well let’s just say he’s unlike Arnold.
Fred Thomspson has a serious chance to win the hearts of the American people because for more than 30 years, he has lived out his act. He’s actually made a great living playing himself. He’s been a prosecutor in real life and a prosecutor on television’s Law & Order. He’s been a senator on the silver screen -- Born Yesterday – and an actual U.S. Senator from Tennessee. He’s also been a rear admiral, a director of the CIA, a high ranking FBI agent and a White House Chief of Staff but to his credit, anyone can do those jobs.
And to think, he could have just been another cranky attorney telling you to get off his lawn but now he may well be the most complete candidate out there even though he hasn’t “announced” that he’s running. But, really, he left Law & Order on May 30 and has been on the talk show circuit ever since so unless he’s prepping for a roll as a retired actor and senator who almost ran for president, he’s given the public every indication that he’ll hit the campaign trail this summer and autumn.
It all began in 1977 when the story of a Tennessee Parole Board scandal, which Thompson helped expose, later became the subject of a 1983 book, Marie, written by Peter Maas. Roger Donaldson, a director, copped the film rights to the book and in the course of doing research in Nashville, interviewed Thompson among others and was apparently so impressed he asked him to play himself. Since then all he had to do was show up and talk in that heavy southern drawl, a baritone molasses that brings to mind your grandpappy and just screams authority figure. He’s the real deal and also knows how to handle himself on and off camera. Let’s see how he stacks up against front runners from both parties:
Thompson and the Donkeys
Fred Thompson vs. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Thompson has also been a U.S. Senator so Hillary can’t pull the lack of experience card out on him. Given his voting record and the fact that he always stays in character, he edges Hillary out in the sense that he is not a carpetbagger or panderer who bristles up when challenged and backs his way out of previously established positions like Hillary did with the Iraq War. Scandals? Please, Thompson was as co-chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee in its investigation of a little thing called Watergate. But Hillary will dig and she will go there after digging. But in the end the public will find that Thompson’s association with the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982, which in part caused the Savings & Loan crisis in the late 80s is a far cry from what Whitewater eventually unearthed. Hello!
Fred Thompson vs. Barack Obama
A lot of people talk about how articulate and good looking Obama is. They talk about his youthful vigor, his audacity of hope, the courage that will keep him from lighting up a square (cigarette for those not familiar with ghetto talk) when his wife is not looking. He’s lauded as a Kennedy-esque vision in black. The truth of the matter is, that neither the staunch conservatives, nor the former Dixiecrats, nor the patronizing-ass northern white liberals who bought his dinner plates to hear him speak are going to vote for him. Let’s face it, he’s black. Mainstream America says it’s ready and people chant, chant, chant until they close the curtain and go down the list and pick somebody white. Let’s face it, Obama probably won’t be a hit south of Chicago, west of New York and east of California and that’s the area where people actually still vote. He might’ve had a chance with the condescending-ass Hollywood limousine liberals but chances are that guys like Kevin Costner, Alec Baldwin and Bruce Willis are going to say: “I worked with Fred, I like him, he can’t be all that bad considering the other choices. Let’s see Fred Thompson or black dude. Think I’ll go with Freddie boy!”
Fred Thompson vs. John Edwards
This probably presents the biggest challenge for Thompson as he will be going head-to-head with someone who is neither a woman nor a person of color. Edwards is a good ‘ol boy south of the Mason-Dixon line just like Thompson is. You also can’t count out the fact that Thompson’s wife, while not a stripper as MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough intimated, is still hot enough to host E! News Daily and despite her credentials in the Republican party, is too cute to be taken seriously and can’t stand up against a woman who has fought cancer. Hate to put it in such shallow terms but you can’t beat a cancer survivor with a doped-horse, a full-house, three of a kind, first and goal or anything else -- it’s impossible. The only way Thompson pulls this out is to have his people focus on Edwards’ status as a loser. Not only did he lose in the primary to John Kerry, he lost as a vice presidential candidate in the general election and went on to lose cool points getting expensive haircuts and championing efficient energy while living in a energy vaccum of a mansion like the homie Al Gore. In the debates, Thompson can just bring it back to his status everytime Edwards makes an eloquent point. He can even get folksy with it: “C’mon ya’ll are you going to believe Fred ‘Big Daddy from down home’ Thompson or this loser.”
Thompson and the Elephants in the Room
Thompson vs. John McCain
For a longtime the former P.O.W. thing was really working for McCain. Who doesn’t support the troops? They dodge bullets and landmines while we sit on our asses, eat crispy chicken sandwiches and write about people we don’t know behind the sublime but anonymous glow of a computer screen in the middle of the night. Then he decided that supporting the troops also meant supporting the “troop surge” and it’s hard to say that you take no prisoners in the “war on terror” when someone actually took you as a prisoner in the war on “Reds.” Not a good look dawg. And consensus builder, consensus schmilder. The GOP is looking for a bullheaded polarizer with all the ol’ boy “heh, heh, heh” of Bush but just without the George W. part. A true conservative, Thompson fits that mold. McCain, meanwhile, as The State newspaper in South Carolina suggests, suffers from “guilt by association” with Ted Kennedy and Dianne Feinstein on immigration.” Being a white man sandwiched between the “Greatest Generation,” and “Baby Boomers,” Fred Thompson would likely be tough on all brown and black people as well as big on small government and bullish on tax cuts. Sounds like a winner to me. Sorry John, maybe vice president? Probably not.
Thompson vs. Rudolph Giuliani
This is a no-brainer. You can’t invoke 9-11 forever. It’s like Chris Rock once opined, why is this guy a superhero for doing his job, going on television calming people down, assessing the damage and getting out there so that his city could see he gave a flip. And even if you concede that what he did is commendable, it was seven years ago. Here’s another reason: the rule of the WASP illuminati shadow government establishment is one Catholic per bicentennial. We already had JFK. Plus, after he put away all of his brethren from the “old country,” support from the Gotti boys might be out. Besides, this cat can’t leave the Tri-State area and pick up votes. No one cares about him once you get out of the Holland Tunnel. But here’s the key: Old people vote but when they’re not voting, they’re watching procedural dramas. Fred Thompson in a landslide. Because, the old lady from Brooklyn who always pokes her head out the window while you’re trying to serve your crack to dope fiends in peace; the old lady that you wish would pass on or get put in a nursing home so you can take over her rent controlled flat; the old lady who would’ve voted for a fellow Brooklynite – Giuliani - when she went to the library in Crown Heights, is only going to remember the nice man from Law & Order. Because she can’t remember, Giuliani, Thompson, why her son isn’t calling and her drug prescription information.
Thompson vs. Mitt Romney
Okay, so what do we got here? There’s an Actor-Senator, a woman, a black man, a Catholic adulterer, a rich white pretty boy tort lawyer, a Vietnam-War-Hero-turned-Iraq-War-Zero and a Mormon. Chances are that there are many people who might put a woman and possibly but not probably an (clearing throat) African-American before a Mormon at the polls. But if you go in order from last to first on the list at the beginning of this paragraph, the choice is pretty clear for any mainstream American being honest with themselves who wants a candidate who they think or know can win.
Time will tell whether Academy Award Winner Al Gore jumps in to mix it up or if some red herring, planned terrorist threat or Osama Bin Laden mixtape hitting the streets will shake things up. However, given American culture’s obsession with actors and the propensity for those actors to make the smooth transition in politics, Mr. Thompson might have his hand on a Bible on the steps of some white building come January 2009 and it won’t be because he was so remarkable. It will be because Americans for all their hypocrisy political correctness and fickle consumer nature are the truest when they get in that booth and no one can hold them accountable for their natural fears and prejudices as well as affinities and preferences. Did you hear that? I think that was the Law & Order bell. And……scene… cut…print.
How long before the conservative Backstabbers are attacking him???
Pray for W and Our Troops
I’ll call that **s kicking and raise you the future of the republic.
RUN FRED RUN!
The article needs a spell checker and the political analysis is superficial and weak. (Not intending to criticize you if this is your piece, but it’s not one of the best I’ve read.)
One of those names is not like the others; one of those names doesn't belong ...
I thought Bruce was one of the good guys ...
Thompson/Brownback 08 would work for me
‘Ghetto talk’? Who uses that term, anymore? As an aside, ‘squares’ is prison parlance, for those not familiar with jail.
Analysis of Thompson’s chances against any given challenger in the primaries—and assuming he wins the nomination—against the Democratic candidate in the general election is a topic for serious study and discussion, but not by this guy. The author grossly underestimates the efficiency of Hillary’s campaign machine, and the remarks about Obama make broad-brush assumptions about both the candidate and the electorate that don’t hold up intuitively and certainly aren’t supported by any poll data—or even anecdotal evidence. But that’s the thing: breezy little opinion pieces like this are flooding the blogosphere and detract attention from more substantiative argument.
Given the thinly veiled racism, sloppy thinking, and shoddy logic, I’m almost tempted to believe this piece was written by a Democratic operative pretending to be a Thompson supporter. It’s almost too amateurish.
The Romney supporters give Fred an occasional bash, but otherwise he seems to have a lot of support in the forum. The only real conservatives running appear to be Fred Thompson and Duncan Hunter. Those two are obviously the Freeper favorites.
But those who are still working for Hunter need to move him out of the pack of minor candidates where he remains. He’s the only credible candidate among them, but he hasn’t yet been able to move above the pack.
Obama’s dad’s from Africa and he was raised in Indonesia. What the hell does he know about ghetto talk?
Today, he continues that tradition - he will be a place holder for the next Bush, George (Foreman :>b Prescott Bush, How do we know, then Google this ? Prescott has jumped to the Fred Head campaign, but I though he has not announced yet. A lot of other Bush hacks also jumped there. G Foreman Prescott B has been bad mouthing the US South of the Border; check HIS blogs if you think all news is biased. Not another 4 years. No more GOoPers. Lets elect an American, not one for the business, by the business and against the electorate.
But, I'm not worried because only Hitlery can win the rat primary. And in a Fred vs. Hitlery matchup, the baldness thing would be totally meaningless.
So many lies I don’t know where to start.
Washington, DC - Today Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Ranking Member Fred Thompson (R-TN) hailed the passage of an amendment creating the new Department of Homeland Security, which the Senate adopted by a vote of 73 to 26. Final passage of the legislation, H.R. 5005, is expected later today.
The Thompson substitute amendment is identical to H.R. 5710, which was passed by the House of Representatives on November 13. With Senate passage of this bipartisan agreement, the legislation will be sent to President Bush to be signed into law...
The Thompson amendment also includes much needed reforms for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to promote stronger border security and immigration services. To address U.S. vulnerability to cyber attacks, the legislation includes language requiring federal agencies to utilize information security best practices to ensure the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of federal information systems...
http://hsgac.senate.gov/111902press2.htm
“I’m concerned about the next 12 million or 20 million. So that’s why enforcement, and enforcement at the border, has to be primary.”
“I think most people feel disillusioned after 1986 when we had this deal offered to them before, and now we’re insisting that, you know, we solve the security problem first, and then we’ll talk about what to do with regard to other things - certainly no amnesty or nothing blanket like that.”
If we can make it nearly impossible for an invader to get a job and give the border patrol the authority and resources to arrest illegals and send them back where they came from, more than half the battle will have been won.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,258222,00.html
George P. Bush has NO role in Thompson campaign. He endorsed him on his own.
You have been given this information repeatedly. Either you're Guy Pearce in Memento or you're a liar. I'd bet on the latter.
Good article.
We must, however, put to death the myth that Al Gore is an Acadamy Award winner.
He is not. Davis Guggenheim won the award. Gore has never been nominated for, nor has won, an Oscar.
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