Novak provides some insight:
Thompson disappointed in his first speech as a prospective candidate, addressing the Lincoln Club of Orange County, Calif., on May 4. Discarding a speech he had written himself, Thompson ad-libbed from handwritten notes, a performance that placed him in the usual run of Republican after-dinner speakers. This was not the second coming of Reagan that Californians envisioned. Was all the excitement about Thompson merely engendered by his television role as the formidable Manhattan district attorney on “Law and Order”?
He stuck to his prepared cards for his second speech, at a Republican state party function in Stamford, Conn., last week, and it was a considerable improvement. It sounded more like an off-the-record conversation he had with me in Orange County, Calif., before his speech there, and his Saturday Evening Club conversation.
The Connecticut Republicans, down to one seat in Congress after 2006 election losses, cheered when Thompson told them: “I think the biggest problem we have today is what I believe is the disconnect between Washington, D.C., and the people of the United States. People are looking around at the pork barrel spending and the petty politics, the backbiting. The fighting over all things, large or small, is creating a cynicism among our people.” That cynicism, Thompson contends, mandates a different kind of campaign for 2008.
Thompson implied at Stamford that Republicans, along with Democrats, are responsible for making Americans cynical. While so far not spelling this out publicly, he deplores ethical abuses, profligate spending and incompetent management of the Iraq war. He becomes incandescent when considering abysmal CIA and Justice Department performance under the Bush administration. He is enraged by Justice’s actions in decisions leading to Scooter Libby’s prison sentence.
In his Senate voting record and his public utterances, Thompson is more conservative than Giuliani, McCain or Romney. He takes a hard line on the war against terror (referring in Connecticut to the danger of “suicidal maniacs” crossing open borders) and worries about immigration policy creating a permanent American underclass. His one deviation from the conservative line has been support for the McCain-Feingold campaign reform, much of which he now considers overtaken by current fundraising practices and perhaps irrelevant.
Did you read this post of mine and the links?
http://www.anglobaptist.org/blog/archives/2007/05/wilmette_in_the.html
I read the article and I really don’t see much substance to it, especially if we wish to discuss something as wacky as “issues” which if we did then we’d see Fred did/does a great deal more than play a conservative on TV. Of all GOP candidates he has the best record.
As far as the one quote which the author thought fit to note as sinking Fred’s ship…well the author is flat wrong.
Fact is, Islamic Law WAS practiced in Saddam’s Iraq, except that it was practiced at HIS whim. Sure the Iraqi government documents “guarenteed” rights to woman (as it did free elections), similar I suppose to the Soviet governing documents guarteed freedom of press…uh-huh, sure. And I suppose we need not mention the Law of Saddam that trumpted even Islamic Law and Iraqi Constitutional Law?
You can find Iraqi women who will tell you things were better under Saddam and you can find Iraqi women who will tell you things were worse under Saddam. BUT, ALL Iraqi women must tell you that they now are under a government that will work to maintain their rights (regardless of how poorly they are managing) and despite the horros being inflicted upon them to deny it. A real democracy is trying there, and if it succeeds (big if) then we will have a government that will truly be respectful of human rights: a rarity in the Middle East.
Thomspon’s point though, as near as I can tell, is spot on: human rights abuses in Iraq and indeed in the greater Middle East are largely ignored until somehow the west may be blamed for them - however indirectly.
Fred’s got my vote…and some of my money too.
Tripp:
I’ve read the opinion piece you link. I have to agree with James’ assessment. There’s nothing of substance here. As James’ has noted, the pre-liberation persecution of Iraqi women is a well-documented fact. That such persecution has continued post-beginning of the Iraq war is not the sort of causal relationship the author envisions.
So, what’s left? A gaff about the “battle” of Valley Forge. The Scooter Libby trial.
Um, I’m sorry. What were the editorialist’s complaints again?
Don’t get me wrong, I fully expect some significant weakness or another of Fred to come out. And certainly a bunch of allegations about some such or another thing that probably didn’t happen but could be spun a certain way. And maybe, just maybe, Fred is, as they say in Texas, all hat.
But I seem to recall another Hollywood actor who helped to bring down a wall and precipitate the end of a truly inhuman government that killed millions more Christians than all centuries combined.
I’ll wait and see about Fred. And this editorialist hasn’t a clue.