The shamble. The disinterest. The plodding. The thick, ridiculous accent. Yes friends, failed candidate Fred Thompson is back on the scene!
Former GOP presidential candidate and close McCain friend, Fred Thompson, is set to join the presumptive GOP nominee during his visit to North Carolina next week. Since losing the South Carolina primary on Jan. 18, Thompson has been absent from the limelight-even choosing to drop out of the race via written statement.
Remember kids: McCain/Thompson 2008: Because Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau couldn’t make it.
In John McCain’s Bush 2.0 tax plan he rolled out Tuesday, former Fred Thompson staffer Sean Hackbarth sees echoes of old mint julep himself. Considering the way Thompson shuffled and ambled two inches in the campaign before falling flat on his face, how is this a good thing?
Of course, these are the guys who seriously think privatizing social security is a good thing. Yes, put our senior’s future in the next Bear Sterns or Enron. Brilliant! Go with that.
Thompson’s appearance last weekend at the annual conference hosted by Teddy Forstmann in Aspen was “embarrassing,” several attendees have told the Huffington Post, as he botched current events questions and suffered from verbal gaffes.
Amid a gathering of high-profile media, business, and government figures, Thompson made the strange claim that the Islamic group Hezbollah is in Afghanistan (it’s based and run out of Lebanon).
Asked whether he would carry over the people and policies of the Bush administration, the Tennessean offered a less than substantive reply: “I would keep the good things and let go of the bad things.”
And peppered by former Secretary of State Colin Powell as to why Thompson and other Republican frontrunners seem to be brushing off the African-American vote, the former senator “could not give a cogent answer,” a source told the Huffington Post.
Talking to reporters later, Thompson, a former Tennessee senator, said his church attendance “varies.”
“I attend church when I’m in Tennessee. I’m in McLean right now,” he said referring to the Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C., where he lives. “I don’t attend regularly when I’m up there.”
Thompson said he usually attends church when visiting his mother in Tennessee and isn’t a member of any church in the Washington area.
Flip Flopping Mitt Romney and Hollywood Actor Fred Thompson are clearly vying over the same batch of the Republican base - the lunatic religious right - and as such you can probably expect some elbows to be thrown. In this instance it’s the Romney campaign’s all-but-unofficial blog hack Hugh Hewitt who essentially screams from the top of his lungs: “DID YOU KNOW THAT FRED THOMPSON HAD CANCER? YES, LIFE-THREATENING CANCER! CANCER, I SAY!”
So, Fred Thompson is going to blow off New Hampshire primary voters in a debate on the conservative Fox News in exchange for a Hollywood appearance with Jay Leno?
Hollywood actor Fred Thompson seems to have thought he could just slide on to the political stage without trying, but the facts are not lining up with the spin.
Lost this week amid other news was the lackluster trip to Iowa made by the candidate-in-waiting. Notes GOP analyst Jennifer Rubin on the American Spectator’s campaign blog: “It was a cringe inducing day for Thompson in the MSM and blogosphere coverage. There was Carl Cameron picking up on the Gucci loafers and the golf cart ride through the Iowa fair. Politico picked up on the lukewarm reception and the crowd’s disappointment that more substance wasn’t offered. MSM coverage echoed the same. He then gave a remarkably muddled interview with John King, leading to guffaws at Campaign Spot and confusion about what he meant with this response to a question on abortion and gay marriage.”
Clearly the Thompson campaign knows he screwed the pooch on the abortion/gay marriage question as they quickly emailed this liberal blogger - no friend of the campaign - their spin on the issue. So far the campaign looks much more competent than the candidate. Or is he a candidate? There’s an FEC complaint about just that issue right now.
I’ve seen positive reports in the field about candidates from all across the spectrum so far, from Kucinich and Ron Paul to Mccain, Giuliani, Clinton, Obama, Romney, and Edwards. But every time Fred Thompson goes out there with actual voters as opposed to some Youtube video for the consumption of con bloggers, it just goes splat.
Right from his lips. When will cons realize that this is not a mainstream position? He also promises to push a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which is the exact same line of crap Bush lied to the religious far right about in 2004 and proceeded to laugh at them after election day and did diddly to advance the promise. Will they fall for it again? Probably.
UPDATE: Hollywood actor Fred Thompson is claiming he didn’t say what he said in the video above and that he’s against a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. Well, either he’s for it like he said, flip flopping on the issue in Romney-quick fashion, or is too tongue-tied to answer a pretty easy question. You choose.
Presumptive presidential candidate Fred Thompson on Tuesday will report raising roughly $3 million in one month for his all-but-certain White House bid, Republican officials said.
Hollywood actor Fred Thompson tested the waters. They’re frigid.
Because she’s a Republican, the media will never treat Jeri Thompson in the same shameful manner they have Hillary Clinton, but the Not Ready For Primetime Campaign of Hollywood actor Fred Thompson had yet another person jump ship.
Another aide to Fred Thompson’s campaign-in-waiting resigned last night, two sources close to the campaign confirm. Tom Frechette had been effectively serving as campaign manager Tom Collamore’s deputy. Collamore was removed from his post Tuesday and given a "senior adviser" role. Like Collamore, Frechhette was said to have chafed under the heavy influence of Thompson’s wife, Jeri.
If he were a Democrat, they’d already be writing his obituary, but Thompson is a Republican so the media has decided that his inept campaign is demonstrating genuine leadership.
All that hype, all that hoopla, for a puny $3 million? You gotta be kidding me.
Sources close to the presumptive campaign tell NBC News that Fred Thompson’s fundraising is down “markedly.” One claimed it has “slowed down big-time.” The pace is described as a consequence of the delayed announcement to enter the race.”The Friends of Fred, Inc.” will report to the IRS its revenue by July 31st. Sources reveal to NBC News that number will be in the range of about $3 million.
That number would put him below or just at the level of second and third tier candidates on both sides of the aisle including Sam Brownback, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, and even Ron Paul.
That media-inflated bubble seems to be getting the air let out.
These are the kind of managerial screwups that are the hallmark of the Bush administration, and the campaign of Hollywood actor Fred Thompson seems to be following in that tradition with yet another firing from his campaign team.
The day after his would-be campaign manager was replaced, Ex-Sen. Fred Thompson has another senior staff position to refill.
J.T. Mastranadi was hired just a week and a half ago to be the campaign’s director of research. He resigned this morning, a friend of his said. The friend said that Mastranadi was “fed up” with the “lack of structure” and was unclear about his role in the coming campaign.
Already trouble in Hollywood actor Fred Thompson’s campaign that still hasn’t started yet? What is this, some kind of disease running rampant in the GOP?
Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson is shaking up his still-unofficial campaign, replacing his top aide with a former Michigan senator and a veteran Florida strategist.
The shake-up comes amid consternation inside the campaign about the active role played by Thompson’s wife, Jeri, a lawyer, media consultant and former Republican National Committee official.
Deception, right out of the gate for Hollywood actor Fred Thompson.
Billing records show that former Senator Fred Thompson spent nearly 20 hours working as a lobbyist on behalf of a group seeking to ease restrictive federal rules on abortion counseling in the 1990s, even though he recently said he did not recall doing any work for the organization.
According to records from Arent Fox, the law firm based in Washington where Mr. Thompson worked part-time from 1991 to 1994, he charged the organization, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, about $5,000 for work he did in 1991 and 1992. The records show that Mr. Thompson, a probable Republican candidate for president in 2008, spent much of that time in telephone conferences with the president of the group, and on three occasions he reported lobbying administration officials on its behalf.
Well, you see Fred is a straight talker, and while those documents show his campaign to be more crooked than a brain damaged steer on the Fourth Of Ju-ly, you gotta remember — he has a deep voice. And an accent. A rich, Southern accent that sounds like Pappy.
Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as an antiabortion Republican, accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and several people familiar with the matter.
A spokesman for the former Tennessee senator denied that Thompson did the lobbying work. But the minutes of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. say that the group hired Thompson that year.
Is Hollywood actor Fred Thompson going to beat Mitt Romney for flip flops here? Romney flip flops for political advantage, but it looks like Fred Thompson flip flopped on abortion in exchange for cold hard cash.
The day before Senate Watergate Committee minority counsel Fred Thompson made the inquiry that launched him into the national spotlight — asking an aide to President Nixon whether there was a White House taping system — he telephoned Nixon’s lawyer.
Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public. In his all-but-forgotten Watergate memoir, “At That Point in Time,” Thompson said he acted with “no authority” in divulging the committee’s knowledge of the tapes, which provided the evidence that led to Nixon’s resignation. It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson’s actions.
“Thompson was a mole for the White House,” Armstrong said in an interview. “Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was.”
…
Just as Thompson once staunchly defended Nixon, Thompson urged a pardon for Libby, who was convicted in March of obstructing justice in the investigation into who leaked a CIA operative’s name.
Richard Nixon was a crook in the White House, Hollywood actor Fred Thompson wants to be a crook-defender in the White House.
Who knew Hollywood actor Fred Thompson would be so quick to fall on his face?
“I plan on seeing a whole lot more of you,” Thompson told about 200 New Hampshire Republicans who paid $50 each to hear him — and to benefit state Republican legislators.
He’d better, because many present came away decidedly under-whelmed.
“It was short,” said Richard Heitmiller of Nashua. “He’s got a nice voice. But there was nothing there. He’s for apple pie and motherhood. He’s going to have to say what he’s for.”
Heitmiller said he hadn’t made up his mind about whom to support — way too early — and had come to learn more about this man he’d heard about but never seen.
“People want to get to know him. He hasn’t been here, and he gives a nine-minute speech,” he said dismissively. As Thompson exited, people started making their way to the doors midway through a reception.
“I told my wife we’d get home by 8. We’ll get home a lot earlier than that,” Heitmiller said.
“He looks good onstage, but I don’t know if he has the gravitas,” said Kathleen Williamson, a conservative Roman Catholic from North Weare. “It seems like he’s trying to win over conservatives, but I’m still not sure he has the credentials. I’m worried he’s trying to get by on his celebrity.”
If I was casting a movie about a gruff conservative president with a bit part, I might cast Fred Thompson, but even in an age as superficial as ours you need more than a role on Law & Order to be president. Even Ronald Reagan brought more to the table than his IMDB credits.
