Admittedly, this is grounded in my crude and stereotypical view of how the Republican Party works, but I think Jon Chait's case that Fred Thompson is the likely GOP nominee is pretty convincing. What's more, he's a pretty solid general election candidate, though 2008 just isn't an especially promising year for a conventional conservative.
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Loving Fred
26 Jun 2007 10:34 am
Comments (19)
For further confirmation of this, check out the Sally Quinn piece in today's Wash Post where she claims "some republicans" want to engineer a Cheney resignation followed by a FThompson replacement.
I still think The Cultist (aka, Mitt Romney) has a decent chance. The Boston Globe is running a multi-part biographical piece on him, and its amazing how good he comes across. Its reminding me why I thought of him as a "good Republican" when he ran for Senate, and later, Governor.
Yes, he has some rancid views nowadays, but that's more a commentary on the state of the Republican party than on his core beliefs, which I suspect do actually exist.
Based on his biography, his strong support of the Iraq war is no surprise: he was also a strong supporter of the Vietnam war, back in the day.
I think Hillary would pound Fred Thompson. She knows how to hit back.
he was also a strong supporter of the Vietnam war, back in the day.
While he was doing LDS missionary work in France, of course. "Other priorities."
I have to disagree with Chait and Yglesias.
Fred Thompson has beein built up as a GOP "dream candidate". Mainly because he is well liked by the Washington journalism class, including that gushing idiot Margaret Carlson who acts like teenage groupie when talking about him.
That said Thompson also has lot of negatives. His health. His trophy wife. His lethargy. He just doesn't seem to have much fire in him or burning ambition.
I am writing off Rudy. I don't care what the polls say. It's not going to happen.
McCain can still make it through the process of elimination. Rudy will tank. If Thompson and Romney also tank then McCain will be the last man standing and will win the nomination. So I am not writing it off.
Romney is more likely to get it than Thompson. He seems very hungry. Will do and say anyhing. He has tons of money to spend.
"engineer a Cheney resignation followed by a FThompson replacement."
It would ensure Thompson's defeat in the general election.
He will have no choice but to go on all the talk shows and defend Bush and his policies for the next year.
I just don't see it. Fred Thompson gives us another 2004 red vs. blue map with a worse macro environment and Ohio and Iowa having ratcheted several points closer to blue beyond that.
Thompson is really just Dubya redux. Would voters really make that mistake again? Yet another lazy, faux-populist rich guy with great name recognition? Unfortunately they probably would. Like Dubya, Thompson is just enough of an empty suit that all the power brokers are convinced they can persuade him to do their bidding. The Republicans really do seem to prefer style over substance. Maybe the US would be better off with a German or Italian style system with a fairly powerless President occupying the symbolic "head of state" role. A perfect job for a Republican puppet like Dubya or a Thompson, then maybe a Democrat would have a good shot at the Prime Minsister position.
I have doubts about Fred, specifically that he is too haughty and lazy to get the nomination. But I have bigger doubts about all of his competitors, so my $5 is on Fred.
The Chait article is lame. He seems to think there's only one factor determining who's going to be the Republican nomineee--what the Republican elite wants. That was the case in 2000, but now the Republican elite is just as divided and befuddled as the Democratic elite usually is.
Still, I think Thompson has to be considered the favorite for the Republican nomination.
1. Thompson will become the regional candidate of the biggest and most important region in the Republican Party--the South. The South is usually associated with the old Confederacy and the Border states, but Oklahoma, southern Ohio, a lot of Indiana, and southern Illinois should also be considered southern as well. That gives Thompson a much larger regional base that any of the other Republican candidates can claim.
2. Thompson has a good shot of pulling in the activist conservative base. He's certainly developed a knack for throwing red-meat to activists on topics like Michael Moore, Hugo Chavez, and the like. The trip to England appears to be working along these lines as well.
3. Thompson's actor persona gives conservatives a kind of life line in that they can hope that Thompson's "manly manness" can make weak Republicans and moderates forget their anger with the Bush administration and continue to vote GOP.
None of this makes him a strong general election candidate. My guess is that Hillary would crush him. But I can still see Thompson's candidacy developing momentum as the primary season moves along and coming out on top by the time of the convention. Thompson has a Southern regional base and he does well with right-wing activists. That will be a tough combination for Giuliani or Romney to beat.
But does Thompson have the temperment to be the figurehead empty suit visible to the country while the Cheney wing of the Republican party continues to run things behind the scenes?
Every voter I know who might swing D in 2008 because of this Administration would automatically vote against Hillary. This unfortunately goes for people who vote in Ohio and Florida.
She can triangulate, contort her views on the issues, hit back against what promises to be an onslaught of anti-Hillary bias right from the get go, whatever... she's still not getting potential swing votes.
However much she massages her positions to try to capture swing voters, people don't see issues when they see her. They either love her or hate her. And I suspect in the safe confines of the ballot box, most people will not be able to overcome the compulsion to loathe her. Believe me, the hate is palpable. There's a reason why the winger sites are all trying to come across as though her nomination is a foregone conclusion: she's their fantasy opponent.
Don't get me wrong. I'm going with whoever dems win. I just want our person to have a real shot. I frankly wish we could be smarter about this, just once--knowing that the other side will certainly be.
I suspect both my in-laws, as well as my parents could vote for yet another actor
Anyone who has seen Thompson on TV knows that the claim he is an actor is a shocking lie . . .
I disagree. Fred Thompson is very good at playing a certain role. And then playing it again. And again. And again.....
Fred Thompson--for when you can't afford the broad range Joe Don Baker brings to play.
"I think Hillary would pound Fred Thompson. She knows how to hit back."
What Dem could actually lose to Thompson? Gravel? And even if Thompson started to lead in the polls, Gravel could just throw a rock at him and dump him in the river. Then he could stare into the camera for half an hour, which would be just as good as Thompson's acting.
I'm surprised that Fred Thompson's LifeLock commercials haven't garnered any mention in the left side of the blogosphere.
First of all, they're sleazy as hell. Initially, it comes across as a PSA where Fred's narrating a scene of heroism in the Iraq war. Then it turns out he's just using their valor as a way of pitching some cheap, crummy ID-theft-protection company called LifeLock.
What the LA Times article in the above link adds to the picture is that LifeLock is run by a guy who's a bit of a crook:
Possible presidential candidate Fred D. Thompson is lending his voice to radio commercials for a company that says it fights identity thieves and that was co-founded by a man accused of taking money from consumer bank accounts without permission.
The one-minute commercials are airing across the country on behalf of Tempe, Ariz.-based LifeLock Inc., which said nearly 200,000 customers pay about $10 a month for services that include placing fraud alerts on their credit files.LifeLock was co-founded in 2005 by Robert J. Maynard Jr., whom the Federal Trade Commission accused in 1996 of deceiving consumers with advertisements that suggested his credit-repair company could remove records of bankruptcies and delinquent payments.
The FTC also alleged that Maynard and another executive at National Credit Foundation Inc. collected checking-account data from its customers for "verification" when the real purpose was to make unauthorized withdrawals from those accounts.
Until proven otherwise, the only part of the GOP elite that matters are the corporate looters who do not want the trough cut off. The culturally right grassroots can veto a candidate, but they don't have access to the right-wing noise machine that will be used to anoint a GOP front-runner. (If they did, Brownback and Huckabee wouldn't be languishing in the second tier.)
If I was corporate looter, I would write McCain off based on his track record. The risk that he reverts to reformist fiscal conservative once he pockets the nomination is too great. Rudy's independent streak makes him a major gamble as well.
For the looters, Multiple Choice Mitt is the best of the bad options in the current GOP top tier. He is a big fan of big business, and has the charisma and political gifts to win a general election. However, he's been willing to govern from the center in the past, and he has a major handicap towards mobilizing the culturally right base. That's why Thompson is so appealing. He is pretty much a tabula rasa, allowing the grass-roots to project what they want onto him and
showing no inclination to buck the big-money elite.
Comments closed July 10, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
As much as they are disgusted by the Decider, I suspect both my in-laws, as well as my parents could vote for yet another actor (they all loved Reagan too). It's a canny nominee for the GOP.
If we pick Hillary, we're dead.
Posted by bleh | June 26, 2007 10:31 AM