I don't believe any conspiracy theories that Fred Thompson deliberately entered the race to sabotage the other candidates so his buddy McCain would win the nomination. That being said, since Fred Thompson was a long time friend of McCain and refused to go say anything critical of him, he did have an indirect effect of making it easier for McCain to win the primary.
A perfect example was Fred Thompson's "must win" state of South Carolina. Up until that point, McCain hadn't won any state that he hadn't already won in his failed 2000 campaign, the race was still a tossup. The polls showed McCain in first place (by a slim plurality) in S.C., with Huckabee and Romney battling it out for second and Fred Thompson and Giuliani behind them. Fred Thompson really hadn't pushed hard yet and time was running out. The obvious stragedy would for Fred to forcefully contrast his conservative values to McCain and pry McCain voters into his camp. But he wouldn't lift a finger to campaign against McCain. Instead, he ran a bunch of attack ads against Huckabee, which didn't do anything to help Fred's numbers (they were appealing to different consituencies -- Huckabee was focused on hardcore pro-lifers and the FairTax people, neither of whom Fred was going for), but it damaged Huck enough to give McCain a clear victory. Once McCain won in "conservative" South Carolina, he had the momemtum as the strongest candidate for the rest of the primary season.
Fred a stalking horse? Sorry EV I don’t buy that. Too many candidates are accused of that in absence of all proof. I don’t believe Fred wasted his time and energy running for President just to help McCain.
As for the EC, in principle I support the popular vote and thus disagree with most freepers. In 04 Kerry lost Ohio and the election by a much smaller margin that he lost nationwide. It would have tremendously pissed me off if he had won with the overall popular majority still going to Bush. I’d be very curious to have seen the reaction to that on the right.
Practically though popular vote is likely to help the democrats more often than not (like in 2000) because of the big cities and their massive fraud. And it opens the door to nationwide recounts, which would be disastrous. And while on principle I don’t care much about empowering smaller states in POTUS elections, those states mostly lean our way so empowering them is positive.
So Fred is wrong, we need the EC to protect us from the aforementioned problems. I’m a realpolitik kind of guy. Lost in the discussion is that it’s exceeding unlikely for the EC and popular vote to actually produce different winners.
I wasn’t on the Fred train at the time in 08. I got on it in hindsight. Since then I’ve learned many things that make me like him less, this is another one. Still like him better than Rudy McRombee.