Well, pooh.

After fairly dismal polling and election results, Fred is dropping out.  I am not surprised, but I am disappointed.

Not necessarily in him, but in the system.  In a process that stifles so much good idea under the cloud of media favorites.  In commentators who never gave his very clear thinking and values a fair shot.

And especially in the field that is left to choose from, since the Dems choices of Edwards, Hillary and Obama don’t sit well for me.

I can’t decide whether to support Mitt, Huck or McCain.  McCain as I have noted has pissed me off playing the Vet Card, Huck plays the God card and Mitt plays the I’m a Christian too card.

None of them are impressing me with their stance on issues.  This may be the first year I abstain in disgust.

And yet, I despise (figuratively) people who whine and don’t participate, so to do that would be to be my own peeve.

Sigh.

OK, we have a few months to decide, so I guess the opportunity to impress me is in their courts.

Hint:  VP Thompson will go a long way to selling me.

Final note, I hate how the process of this election was subverted by the Dems who started their campaigning a whole year too soon.  That drew in the Republicans, and I think Fred decided not join in the early campaign parade, fearing voter exhaustion.

I think that cost him the nomination.

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As the South Carolina primary approaches, Fred has begun to fire it up.

He is driving the consistent conservative message, subtly distancing himself from the Bush admin and answer tough questions with common sense.

Here are a few samples, the first from Reuters:

Thompson criticizes appeal to Saudis

Appealing to Saudi Arabia to encourage higher oil production to help lower prices is not in the long-term interest of the United States, Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson said on Wednesday.

The White House said President George W. Bush hopes that as a result of his talks this week with King Abdul of Saudi Arabia, OPEC would be encouraged to increase production to help alleviate high oil prices, which have touched $100 a barrel.

Appearing on CNN, Thompson was asked whether, as president, he would turn to Saudi Arabia for help as Bush did.

Thompson, a former Tennessee senator, said the problem was a “little bigger” than Saudi Arabia.

“It’s not in the United States’ long-term interest to go hat in hand begging people to do things that in the end we know they’re not going to do,” Thompson said.

“What we need to concentrate on is diversifying our own energy sources here in this country and opening up what oil reserves that we have here … using nuclear more, using clean coal technology more and all the other things that we can do,” Thompson said.

Simple common sense.  The Saudis are not the answer, energy independence is.

Next, Via Hot Air, Fred takes on gun control:

Thompson: Bush Admin overlawyered DC 2A case

The Fred Thompson for President, South Carolina bus tour reached Spartanburg today, where the Law & Order TV star candidate fielded questions at Papa’s Breakfast Nook from Charlotte, N.C.’s WBT-AM radio talk show host Jeff Katz.

Fred Thompson’s campaign is breaking my heart…or more to the point, the media’s ignoring of it is.  He continues to say what needs to be said to the Republican party, and to his opponents he has become the elder statesman who slaps down their bullshit rhetoric.

And the media casually dismisses the most practical voice in favor of those they can demagogue the best:  The Preacher, the Mormon and the POW.

Here are some recent clips and such.

Via Hot Air and STA, here is audio of Rush discussing Fred, including some Fred clips:

Next is video of Fred, two clips from Hot Air.  Again, Fred wins the common sense award by calling it like it is:

By the way, here is the line of the night:

I love this guy.

Fred did pick up a key endorsement:  Human Events

I don’t know if this is THE big endorsement hyped up from yesterday or not. It is a good one though, right on time to keep him on a roll.

The 2008 presidential election is the most unusual and most important in many years. It’s been more than five decades since such a race didn’t feature an incumbent President or Vice President. Since World War II, America has not had a presidential election at a time when the stakes were higher. Conservatives have to win this election, and to do so, we have to identify a candidate around whom we all can rally.

Fundamental Beliefs

We begin by recalling the profound words of Ronald Reagan at the Conservative Political Action Conference Feb. 15, 1975: “A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers.” We believed that then, and we believe it now. The issue for us — and for the conservative community — boils down to which of the candidates is most representative of the fundamental conservative principles we believe in. The answer is Fred Thompson.

Via The Corner:

On the Internet as of sometime this afternoon, Fred Thompson’s closing argument to the people of Iowa.

Whereas Romney is saturating the airwaves with attack ads, Thompson pays the voters the courtesy of speaking calmly, and in detail—the video runs to just over 15 minutes. Why should the good Republicans of Iowa support Thompson? Because, the candidate argues, he can win.

YouTube video below:

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More at Memeorandum.

What this is not:  A campaign commercial.  If he had not flashed his name at the end you would not have known.  No voice overs, no photo ops.  Just the music, and the photos which speak volumes.

What this is:  A classy way to wish the troops a happy holiday, considering where many of them are, without overtly trying to sleaze a few votes.

Via Hot Air

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I love that guy.

Amanda at Think Progress goes on a rant against Huckabee and Thompson regarding their positions about Global Warming.  IN her post she notes:

Huckabee responds that “scientifically,” he doesn’t know whether global warming is “overblown.” Thompson goes a step further, claiming that the “state of entitlements” and “extremists” who “want to do drastic things to our economy” are the real problems:

THOMPSON: There are a lot of unanswered questions. We don’t know to the extent this is a cyclical thing. This may or may not effect very much. The extremists are the ones who want to do drastic things to our economy before we have more answers as to how much good we can do and whether people in the other parts of the world are going to contribute. It’s the fact that our entitlements are bankrupting the next generation. We’re spending the money of those yet to be born and we can’t continue that way.

Thompson and Huckabee are wrong. The debate is over about whether manmade global warming is a threat. Even members of the Bush White House have admitted so.

Well the first thing to note is that Amanda is dead wrong.  The science is not settled, and any honest debate needs to remember that.

It’s ironic that this article just came to my attention.

Sun, Not Man, Main Cause of Climate Change, New Study Says

According to a new study on global warming, climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia found that the climate change models based on human influence do not match observed warming.

That is contrary to the views held by former Vice President Al Gore, who accepted the Nobel Prize on Monday along with the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and who thinks that climate change is largely caused by human action.

Here is yet another reason to like Fred! Thompson:  His Immigration plan.

While I might differ on the odd point or two, overall his plan actually makes sense.  It treats the problem as a whole, and attacks it from all angles, not just from the Border fence as many others.

Border Security and Immigration Reform Plan

In the post-9/11 world, immigration is much more of a national security issue. A government that cannot secure its borders and determine who may enter and who may not, fails in a fundamental responsibility. As we take steps to secure our borders and enforce our laws, we must also ensure that our immigration laws and policies advance our national interests in a variety of areas, and that the immigration process itself is as fair, efficient, and effective as possible.

Securing the Border and Enforcing the Law

A fundamental responsibility of the federal government is to secure the nation’s borders and enforce the law. The following policies and initiatives will put the nation on a path to success:

1. No Amnesty. Do not provide legal status to illegal aliens. Amnesty undermines U.S. law and policy, rewards bad behavior, and is unfair to the millions of immigrants who follow the law and are awaiting legal entry into the United States. In some cases, those law-abiding and aspiring immigrants have been waiting for several years.
2. Attrition through Enforcement. Reduce the number of illegal aliens through increased enforcement against unauthorized alien workers and their employers. Without illegal employment opportunities available, fewer illegal aliens will attempt to enter the country, and many of those illegally in the country now likely will return home. Self-deportation can also be maximized by stepping up the enforcement levels of other existing immigration laws. This course of action offers a reasonable alternative to the false choices currently proposed to deal with the 12 million or more aliens already in the U.S. illegally: either arrest and deport them all, or give them all amnesty. Attrition through enforcement is a more reasonable and achievable solution, but this approach requires additional resources for enforcement and border security:
   1. Doubling ICE agents handling interior enforcement, increasing the Border Patrol to at least 25,000 agents, and increasing detention space to incarcerate illegal aliens we arrest rather than letting them go with a promise to show up later for legal proceedings against them.

The joke always goes like this:  how can you tell when a politician is lying?  His lips move.

Exaggeration, nuance and outright lies go hand in hand with politics.

So there is a thriving market to take the stump speeches and campaign promises and debunk them for obvious mistakes or even outright bullshit.

One of the main sites is factcheck.org, and they love to take the debates apart.  I personally think they are a bit left leaning as they give some democrats a walk on some whoppers, but that is mostly my own bias I think.

So in the debate yesterday, Fact Check took apart Fred and gave him a detailed and comprehensive thumbs up for his factual statements.

And that is frankly a first.  It seems like they were dying to catch him, seeing as it was his first foray into the debate scene.  Well he stumped them by sticking to the truth.

Fred’s Facts Check Out; Rudy’s Don’t

Analysis

The Oct. 9 debate in Detroit was the first in which former Sen. Fred Thompson appeared with the full array of Republican rivals. That led Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to quip that the long string of GOP debates had become like the NBC television program “Law & Order”: “It has a huge cast, the series seems to go on forever, and Fred Thompson shows up at the end.”

But Thompson made it through his first debate without making any false or misleading factual claims that we could detect, while former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani committed multiple factual gaffes, adding to a growing list of misstatements. 

I am ignoring the Giuliani errors, this is about Fred.

Thompson: Just the Facts

Thompson stuck to the facts in his rookie outing. A number of his statements attracted our interest, but they all checked out.

Those who read here often know I like Ann Coulter.  She is frank and harsh but more often then not, right on the mark when she goes after the liberals in America.

But not infallible, as this piece shows.  In this article she attacks people who dislike the front runners (Guliani and Romney) for not being conservative enough and are gravitating to Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson.

I admit that neither of these two are flashy and they are certainly not neo cons, but they are often solid and sensible, and do reflect conservative values.  I think that she is missing that in her desire to promote a hardline conservative candidate. 

And in Thompson’s case, her dislike of him is centrally based on his vote in the Clinton impeachment, and in my opinion, she is cutting off her nose to spite her face.

Fred Sawyer and Huckabee Finn

Conservatives unhappy with our Republican presidential candidates seem to be drifting aimlessly toward Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee in the misguided belief that these candidates are more conservative than Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. This is like breaking up with Bobby Brown so you can date Phil Spector.

On illegal immigration, Huckabee makes George Bush sound like Tom Tancredo. He has compared illegal aliens to slaves brought here in chains from Africa, saying, “I think frankly the Lord is giving us a second chance to do better than we did before.”

…

Huckabee also joined with impeached president Bill Clinton in a campaign against childhood obesity. What, O.J. wasn’t available?

Question:  Was childhood obesity a valid issue or not?

Bill and Mike’s excellent adventure lasted about one week in May 2005 — or just long enough to burnish the image of the president who committed perjury and obstruction of justice in a civil rights suit against him, molested the help and was credibly accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick.

Here comes her agenda.