Can't Get You Out of My Fred

D. Sidhe, in this comment at TBogg's, provides as astute an explanation for the appeal of Fred Thompson as I have heard or read anywhere:

He's the perfect candidate for K-Lo. He tells her everything's fine, and that's what she wants to believe anyway. I was pondering this earlier and it occurs to me that Fred is handling this campaign as though America has asked him if this dress makes us look fat. "No, honey, you look great, I still love you. The girls at the office are just jealous of how pretty you are. Hey, let's go have ice cream, whaddaya say?"

I know from my own relationship that this is a winning strategy from day to day, but over the long term it's a disaster. But all Fred has to do is get people to vote for him once.

That seems to be pretty much it, especially when you peruse the hostile, vituperative (as Dean Broder might say, when he's not busy transcribing the NRCC's sales pitch) nature of Thompson's brand of nutroots supporters. Once you get past the heavily worn rhetoric and straw-man arguments, it all boils down to everyone else being wrong and out to get us for no good reason at all. It makes sense that they would jump through hoops and lick the spaces where their own nuts used to be, just for the opportunity to pimp (much less vote) for someone who affirms those fantasies.

As for Thompson himself, I still stand by all my previous prognostications, that he'll hang in just long enough to generate some cash, and then duck out abruptly. Originally my over/under date for that probably would have been between Thanksgiving and the end of the year, but I can actually see him riding it to the first or second primary. The competition is certainly weak enough to give him some added longevity, but it's still hard to imagine a more temperamentally ill-suited person for the rigors of campaigning, much less occupying office.

(Intellectually, you could obviously say the same about Bush, though Bush's stupidity is his strength here -- Thompson seems intelligent enough to have genuine disdain for the pud-pounding nonsense of whistle-stop campaigning and sound-bite regurgitating, where Bush clearly enjoys any and all opportunities to have his ego stroked or to play dress-up, all the while actin' like it don't make no never mind diff'rence anyhoo, he'd jes' rather be a-chasin' tumbleweeds.)

From all the reportage I've read so far on tonight's "debate", it seems a predictably dismal affair, a bunch of armchair tough-guys lobbing homilies and bromides as if they were spitballers from the Casey Stengel era. If you're into empty qual-flashing -- and your modern conservatard is certainly that -- then you may have a tough time eeny-meeny-miney-moeing your way through this collection of fartknockers.

But it's time someone told the truth, girlfriend, however diplomatically -- that dress has shrunk and faded, and your ass is looking like two hundred pounds of chewed bubble gum. It doesn't hurt to change once in a while, maybe even shower first. It's the people who actually care about you who tell you the truth; if you want your fake friends who tell you what you think you want to hear, you know where to find them.