Posted on 01/02/2008 9:00:41 AM PST by pissant
Two days before the Iowa caucuses — day 15 of his 17-day "hands down" bus tour — former senator Fred Thompson's campaign bus stood motionless in the snowy parking lot of a West Des Moines motel, across from a movie theater and a suburban strip mall.
Thompson's campaign scheduled only one event for New Year's Day, a meet-and-greet at the Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown, about an hour outside Des Moines. Thompson, R-Tenn., shunned the bus, emblazoned with his picture, for the relative comfort of a black Chevrolet Suburban.
(snip)
Thompson has staked his campaign's prospects to Iowa. In seeking to jump-start his campaign last month, he promised to crisscross the Hawkeye State with visits to 50 cities and towns in 17 days aboard his new campaign bus.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Because they believe they are relevant :)
I’m not. I’m just defending myself from the notion that I don’t discuss the candidates records. It is Fred’s record, not his current rhetoric, that makes him a moderate.
You’re kidding, right? Giuliani has been getting pimped non-stop by one entire network (Fox) and has been getting mostly softballs from the rest. He has his very own radio shill ( and several shill-ettes) in Hannity ( and the replacements he uses when on vacation). Not to mention all the print media help he’s had all along, because he’s the most liberal of the GOP candidates.Funny that since he’s been cratering in the polls, he’s still on the media radar, even though he’s nearly down to Hunter/Ron Paul numbers.
Giuliani has not been “hit with slime pieces”, he’s had to face up to the life that he’s lived so far. Mitt has had to face up to his past. Is this slime?
Becuase Fred has celebrity and money and name ID and many GOP bigs backing him, yet he is continuing to flounder. And Hunter could certainly use an influx of volunteers.
Well, I will say though, that I don’t plan on voting for Giuliani, Romney or Huckabee, so it really doesn’t matter much to me if Thompson or Hunter aren’t the standard bearer when the primaries and caucuses are over. In that case, I could easily go third party.
The Republican party is essentially dead to me. While I wish they could get their act together and support conservative values with fervor, that simply isn’t in the works. That saddens me, but I can’t change it. Alas I can't support it either.
Buh-bye. I’m not rehashing all that’s been hashed and hashed and hashed.
Well, in this context “attack” meant posting a news article that provide a factual statement about Fred’s bus.
So I think that for this thread the term “attack” was meant to apply to facts.
But in fact, Romney doesn’t have a longstanding pro-abortion record. He has a long-standing pro-abortion stance, but he until he was Governor he never had a “record” on the subject, other than his wife giving $150 at a planned parenthood fundraiser in 1994.
Once he became Governor, he had a chance to build an actual record. And while for the first two years, his rhetoric was still pro-abortion, it turns out his actions were pro-life. In fact, Mass. pro-life groups thanked him at the end of his term for his hard work on valuable pro-life legislation.
And most of what is cited as “pro-abortion” actions are actually not actions he took, or were actually not as they are portrayed.
For example, he is attacked for “forcing catholic hospitals to administer the morning-after pill”, and that is used to claim that he supports abortion.
But in fact, he vetoed the legislation making the morning-after pill available. And when the legislature overrode the veto, he still tried to exempt the hospitals by claiming that under a previous law, they were exempt, and hte new law didn’t specifically say it was revoking that exemption.
Unfortunately, the new law HAD contained the exemption, and the legislature had removed it, and the legal advisors researched the issue and told Romney that the law clearly had removed the hospital exemption. So Romney implemented the law as it was written over his veto.
He was opposed to forcing the hospitals to give out the pills, and because he fought hard to protect them before having to give in to the law, some people falsely claim he “flipped” on the issue (counting his enforcement of the law as a change in HIS position).
The story on abortions in the medical plan is similar, although he never vetoed it because not only would it be fruitless given the overwhelming vote, but he wasn’t opposed to the medical insurance including coverage for medically necessary abortions. Romney still supports abortion for rape and incest, if I read him correctly (as does Fred Thompson). If you believe abortion should be legal for rape and incest, you certainly would want medical insurance to cover the procedure.
He opposed the embryonic stem cell research measures, opposed cloning.
You’re confusing me with someone who pays more than a modicum of interest in your personal opinions.
I like Hunter, I don’t particularly care for your means of promoting his candidacy, but guess what? That’s just my opinion. I also don’t particularly care for your means of putting down those who don’t support you candidate of choice, but guess what? That is also just my opinion.
I also don’t particularly care for the way others are promoting other candidates either.
Having mature discussions about the positions being stated by candidates is a great means of sorting the wheat from the chaff. Attacking supporters of other candidates because of their support is totally counter productive to the goal we all seek, which is a conservative candidate.
You are probably right from a practical matter, but Thompson already had his moment in the sun, and he didn’t catch on.
If Hunter could get pushed to 10%, he’d get real press coverage, which means a lot of people would hear what he had to say, he’d get more than 2 questions at a debate, he’d be doing Tim Russert, and he’d be the gossip in all the newspapers.
Maybe that wouldn’t help him, but we won’t know because it won’t happen. It COULD have helped him — When Huckabee got past 10%, he got huge coverage which boosted him up another 15 points almost, until people realised he was rather flawed, and now he’s falling.
Imagine if that happened with Duncan, and people found he was NOT flawed.
Sill, it’s really an academic exercise. Fred couldn’t have known where he’d be today, and wouldn’t have supported Hunter, so it’s a moot point.
Worth repeating.
That's okay, ABC is stumbling towards extinction.
Leni
I’m not confusing you with anyone. You posted to me, you got a response.
I saw Thompson on L&O last night... think it was USA or TNT...
Just gave some more cashola to Fred!!! Thanks for the Ping
Exactly!
Man, what do we really stand for? This is rather revealing...
The media has not ceased to tell everyone ho listens to them that Fred is old, lazy, stumbling, etc. They say nothing to his message. They are so against him because he is a bonifide conservative and they prefer a RINO if they have to stomach a Repub Pres.
Just because ABC says it doesn't make it anywhere close to the truth.
vaudine
Perhaps, but in NH, Hunter and Fred are running neck and neck. Time for Fred to drop and endorse Hunter.
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