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Title: Good news for Huckabee (Thompson leaving said to help him the most)
Source:
www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/blogs
URL Source: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pit ... dex.php?archive=January%202008
Published: Jan 22, 2008
Author: Salena Zito/Steve Adams
Post Date: 2008-01-22 17:45:30 by Ferret Mike
Keywords: None
Views: 184
Comments: 10
Fred Thompson has dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination for president, which can only boost the campaign of Mike Huckabee. Thompson stayed in long enough to cause damage to Huckabee in South Carolina's primary, siphoning off the evangelical and conservative votes from Huckabee, and boosting John McCain's win. In a statement issued at 2:24 p.m., Thompson said: "Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for president of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people." Democratic strategist John Lapp said, "On first blush, it would seem that (Mike) Huckabee is the main beneficiary of Fred Thompson's withdrawal. Huckabee, Thompson and, to a lesser degree, Mitt Romney were splintering the hard core, evangelical, social conservative vote. With Thompson's withdrawal, Huckabee has the chance to consolidate the far right. However, if Thompson endorses John McCain, that would be a nice conservative credential to have, considering McCain has been struggling with the mainline conservative Republican base." "Fred Thompson's campaign was ill-conceived from the start” Lapp added. “It speaks volumes that Thompson's campaign was launched by Washington insiders at the old school power lunch restaurant -- The Monocle.” “It would be fitting if Thompson closed out his campaign there as well, decked out in tasseled Gucci loafers." This analysis from Jan. 6 bears repeating: Goodbye, Fred MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Fred Thompson spent most of caucus night in Iowa hovering between third and fourth place -- a far cry from the lofty first-place position he held in Rasmussen's poll of likely Republican caucus-goers last June. It has been a long time since Thompson has made a compelling reason to be in this race. And it should be a very short time before he confesses a compelling reason to exit stage right. A bystander in his own race, Thompson's political what-could-have-been slipped through his fingers long before he announced his candidacy. "The process for running for president has begun so early," says GOP political strategist Charlie Gerow, "that if you are not in the game, you are not in the game ... and Fred Thompson was never in the game." Larry Sabato, who directs the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, says "the biggest loser of 2008 is already known: Fred Thompson. The biggest pre-candidacy buildup since Ted Kennedy in the 1980 cycle has led to the same result -- a failure to come close to fulfilling his high expectations." The short story of Fred Thompson started just about a year ago at the conservative love-fest known as the Conservative Political Action Convention, or CPAC. There, hints of a Thompson hat-toss began. By late spring, he was all the rage. He hit his high note with a clever video smacking down docudrama king Michael Moore. Suddenly, the political and media worlds could not get enough of Fred. It was his shining moment -- except that Fred forgot to shine. Summer came and went. So did a whole lot of staff and a whole lot of opportunities. His eventual announcement in September came with a hefty price tag -- the Republican Primary voters in New Hampshire. He chose to announce on Jay Leno's show, bypassing the first New Hampshire debate the same evening. "He was an attractive idea, an image, and the reality couldn't match it," Sabato says. "This may be the fate of anyone touted as the next Reagan. Reagan is no longer a man. He's a myth. No living human being can fulfill those expectations." "My opinion of what happened to Fred Thompson is that he turned out to be ... Fred Thompson," adds Matt Lebo, political science professor at New York's Stony Brook University. "I don't think it's just his late entry -- that is just a symptom of the problem," Lebo says. "The problem is that he has never shown a willingness to fight for conservative causes. Believing in those causes isn't enough. There should be some evidence that you are willing to do something about it." While comparisons have been made to the failed 2004 campaign of Wesley Clark, those may not be fair. Clark was a political novice; Thompson is not. So why did Thompson go wrong? "I think he was expecting to ride in, pick up the bouquet, and that would be that," says Bert A. Rockman, head of the political science department at Purdue University. "It doesn't work that way. "People confuse appearance with reality. Thompson played hard-as-nails authority figures on TV and in the movies. But his campaign had no distinctiveness, no comparative advantage." Somehow, someone must have convinced Thompson that times had changed and he could run a different kind of campaign, one that suited his low-key approach to politics. A campaign sans rubber-chicken dinners, moldy bus tours and all the other degrading aspects of running for president. Tack on the misconceptions that tens of millions of dollars were waiting for him, that he could easily round up organizational support -- and that pretty much sums up why the promise of Fred never happened. As the country shifts its gaze toward New Hampshire, Thompson stands to fare even worse here than he did in Iowa. As of Friday morning, he was polling sixth among likely Republican voters. So, the near-term question for Fred Thompson isn't if he drops out of the race but when.
Poster Comment: Let's hope this helps Ron Paul the most. Nothing is set in stone yet regarding either party's nominees.
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#2. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
(Edited)
Huckabee Broke Source: American Spectator
A FReeper wondering what to do now that FRed is politically dead. I saw that, he doesn't have the funds to contend with the other Pygmies in the evil of the several lessors Republicans who are dumb enough to let the media and backroom boys say are the only choices as they try to pretend and ignore Dr. Paul away. They have a genuine choice before them, let's hope they discover the only candidate who has a chance to make a real positive difference and who can defend the Constitution. Something that is just " another goddamn piece of paper" to people like Bosh and Cheney.
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#5. To: Itisa1mosttoolate (#2)
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