Spiked Punch

In his Political Punch column, Jake Tapper helps Fred Thompson explain himself a little more thoroughly.

The larger point Thompson seems to have been trying to make is that he's not interested in the process of running for president, but he wants to be president and thinks he'd be a good one.

He also said -- and this isn't new -- that those who have had fire-in-the-belly for the job aren't necessarily the people who should be entrusted with the job.

Yeah, case in point there would be ol' Oedipus Tex, who enjoys the leadin' 'n' decidin' 'n' dressin' up 'n' all, but not so much on the part about knowin' stuff. That would have taken time and effort, cut into his two hours a day of mountain biking and the afternoon nap.

I think Thompson is a shrewd enough character to know how his phrasing will be perceived by his crowd, that they all know who is consumed by personal ambition. It's as much about the she-goblin of their fever dreams having too much fahr in the belly, than Ol' Fred not having enough.

But you could say the same thing about Romney, who is apparently hellbent on spending Tagg's inheritance on making sure the Cornfield County Caucus tilts his way ever so slightly over the Huckabee juggernut [sic]. Romney seems to enjoy trying to be everything to everyone; someone (I'm sick and I don't feel like looking it up) very astutely pointed out the other day that if Romney felt that being a pirate would get him the nomination, he would have run as a pirate. That about covers it.

His efforts to clarify his colleagues' work and Thompson's thoughts nearly complete, Tapper offers some final nuggets o' wisdom.

That's Fred. Fred is Fred. He has disdain for the process. And I think probably most of us can understand why.

Ah, Fred is Fred. But of course. It all seems so simple now.

So where was Fred's "disdain for the process" when he was making money off it, being a Warshington lobbyist for twenty years, or parlaying the perception of his gravitas (and ooooh, his height) into a comfortable supporting niche of authority characters? Why would Thompson have disdain for the process, when the initial stages of it for him consisted of mash notes and swoony bullshit from everyone from Margaret Carlson to Tweety Matthews. I mean, if we're going for fuckability quotient, then why not get Heidi Klum or Katherine Heigl in the race while we're at it?

And I'm not sure whom exactly Tapper means by "most of us" understanding Fred's imaginary disdain. Is Tapper talking as a voter here, or as part of the electoral-industrial complex, a group of vertically-integrated conglomerate media entities who make tons of money spinning their wheels over a two-year campaign? I do not quite get the observations of people such as Thompson and Tapper, who are literally part of the problem they so plaintively decry.

Right Said Fred

This is precisely the sort of tedious horse-race coverage sensible people should deplore:

Fred Thompson came out on top in Wednesday's debate among the Republican presidential candidates in Iowa. Of all the candidates, he did himself the most good.

Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney also scored well. They avoided any last-minute derailments of their front-running candidacies in Iowa and shored up the support they've built.

So let me get this straight -- a candidate who has basically fallen off the radar, because he's decided to play this like a job he doesn't want to appear to want too much, topped the two prospective front-runners? Well, no, not exactly. It's just that Fred showed a pulse for one night, which is more than he's done in the past six weeks. Lowering expectations always helps with this crowd.

So what exactly did the esteemed lobbyist from Hollyweird say that rejuvenated his malingering excuse for a candidacy?

He had several high points. One of them came when he flatly refused to play the "raise your hand" game in answering a question about global warming. Another came when he said the biggest problem facing education was the National Education Association. (Bashing teacher unions is always popular with Republican audiences.)

Thompson also gets credit for being a stand-up guy willing to take on entitlement programs that threaten to bankrupt the country if left unchanged. He made it clear that wealthy, older Americans could no longer expect full Medicare benefits if he's elected. Thompson also teased Romney about his wealth and how the former Massachusetts governor is "getting to be a pretty good actor."

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold up a second there, hoss. Talk about your loaded euphemisms, the "entitlement programs that threaten to bankrupt the country if left unchanged". There are plenty such entitlement programs that will do that if permitted to fester, starting with our catastrophic foreign policy. How many more bungled invasions do you think we can stand? I'm sure Fred has a folksy metaphor to answer with, but I don't really care how many ticks his uncle's bloodhound had, sorry.

But hey, at least he's letting those elderly parasites know exactly where he stands on things, so they have no excuse if they fall for his schtick. (Of course, Fred's needs are well-met, thanks to those same taxpayers who are expected to throw away what safety net they might have.) And as for teasing Richie Rich about being rich, well, pot meet kettle. Fred may not be worth Willard's reputed $200 mil+, but he's not going broke either. Nothing worse than one rich asshole trying to play the class warfare card with a richer asshole.

The biggest problem with the debate was that it wasn't really a debate. Candidates got almost no opportunity to grill one another. Often they ran out of time and were cut off just as they started to probe an opponent.

The event would have been more nourishing had the format allowed for more back-and-forth.

Sure, and if your aunt had balls, she'd be your uncle. "Nourishing", that's freakin' hilarious. We're talking about a set of candidates -- and an audience -- that still happily supports this failure of an administration. These people are so malnourished, I almost feel like I should try to save them for only pennies a day, and they can write me heartwarming letters about the new well in their village.

As much of a dog-and-phony show as these things are, at least this wasn't cluttered with a preening celebrojournomoderator. The last thing any of us needed was Tweety Matthews spanking his beleaguered monkey behind the podium over how tall Fred is. In the meantime, I still assume that, given the sheer incompetence, buffoonery, and baggage of the rest of the field (and seriously, what the fuck is wrong with Alan Keyes?), Romney will get the nomination. He's got the money, the telegenic demeanor, and he seems the least certifiable, which is saying something with this lot.

The question is, who gets Romney's nod for veep? I think he'll throw a bone to the CPAC losers, it's just a matter of to what degree. Of his competitors, I could see McCain getting pulled on to a ticket, despite his age. Beyond that, it all depends on how cray-zay they want to get.

Fred Dawn

So 'merka's once 'n' future king, Joe Don Baker Fred Thompson, has finally decided to answer the New Hampshire Union-Leader's challenge to shit or get off the pot by, well, punting -- he'll formally enter the day after the debate. Great timing, especially since the paper had already pre-emptively floated the notion that Thompson would attempt that very tactic in order to avoid the rigors of an actual debate.

This is no small issue for Thompson's putative viability, illusory as it is -- Romney has already proven that he can paper up the straw polls with his hefty bankroll, and Mike Huckabee of all people seems to have the most pound-for-pound momentum out of Iowa. Giuliani and McCain seem to be fading fast from disdain and disinterest, respectively. Plus they've already been, you know, debating for several weeks now, and Thompson's honeymoon seems to be well and truly done already. He's got some catching up to do, considering this started as the would-be Summer of Fred.

So I will just reiterate my earlier predictions, once again, that Thompson's candidacy is just a sideshow for the rubes, grift them of some money for Ol' Fred's finder's fee, round 'em up and send 'em to whomever offers Our Boy a fair sop. As TPM commenters noted, Thompson looks like hell, and he was a notoriously lazy man in some notoriously lazy gigs well before he got old and sick. Running for president is at least as much work as actually being president (well, unless you're Vacation Boy the Texas Tumbleweed Chaser), and even if Thompson had no medical issues, it's a gig that would wear out a man 15 years younger.

But Thompson's not so lazy that he can't see that this is an insanely easy way to pick up a couple mil and have everyone line up to kiss your ass for a while. Not a bad summer hiatus' work, and then he can go back to Walking Tall Law & Order, ego and bank account well gratified, with thousands of grifted goobers wondering what the hell to do with their advocacy blogs. Maybe Tancredo will still be in by Thanksgiving, who knows?

Mama He's Lazy

The question is not whether a slick-drawling actor/lobbyist being pushed into the ring by his wife can be the "savior" of his party. Seriously, it is not even remotely a legitimate question, considering the rest of the Republican landscape, which has been laid waste largely by their own excesses.

No, the question at this point is whether such a corrupt cadre of image-spinning idiot-wranglers even deserves to be saved, if this is their last best hope.

"People are not inspired; everyone's flat-lining," says Ken Duberstein, former chief of staff for Ronald Reagan. "Right now, Fred is all things to all people. Everyone's waiting to see if he can live up to expectations."

With those expectations casting Thompson as Reagan reincarnate, it's easy to understand why he's staying out of the race for as long as he can. The next Republican debate takes place Aug. 5 in Des Moines, to be followed six days later by the Iowa straw poll in Ames, an expensive faux election that measures the muscle of a candidate's organization and the thickness of his wallet more than his actual appeal to caucus voters. Thompson advisers decided that the risk of underperforming at either of these high-profile events was too great - and outweighed any advantages that would be gained by launching the campaign over the summer. As one Thompson partisan noted, John McCain's spectacular fall from Establishment front-runner to underfunded underdog proves how hard it is to sustain a lead, month after month, without faltering.

Also, it's gotta be damn near impossible to sustain any momentum with a closet case like Zach Wamp furiously humping your legs for weeks on end. Seriously, have you seen some of this guy's gushing over Big Fred's manly manliness? There's less campy flamboyance in Rip Taylor's love letters to Charles Nelson Reilly. In the stages of official Republican closet gayness, Wamp's slavering mash notes are somewhere between texting teenage pages from the House floor and offering to blow a cop in a public park.

But as far as we know, Wamp is not wearing a diaper, so at least he's got one up on David Vitter. Oh no I di'unt!!1!1!

Of course, as with any good Hollywood narrative arc, right now Our Hero finds himself in a spot of trouble. Oh no! Can he extricate himself in time to save the day and get the girl?

And even before launching, the Thompson campaign has experienced its first staff shake-up. After clashing with Thompson's wife Jeri, acting campaign manager (and close Thompson friend) Tom Collamore was ousted in favor of former Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham and Randy Enwright, a veteran G.O.P. strategist. "I do worry that Jeri is the one really running his campaign," says a House Republican who describes himself as "likely" to support Thompson. "She's smart, but that could be a recurring problem."

Uh-oh. I think we know how the Party o' Gawd feels about uppity wimmins. Quick, to the Cleavagemobile!

Thompson is also playing in a gray legal zone by postponing his announcement. Currently his noncampaign campaign is a "testing the water" committee registered as a 527, a tax-exempt group with disclosure requirements far less stringent than those of a real campaign organization. Federal election law requires Thompson to declare himself a candidate once he decides to plunge into the water, which - given that he has signed up more than two dozen staffers, opened two offices and appointed his second and third campaign managers - he seems to have done.

Per my consistent theses that this whole Run Fred Run is just a big scam, I believe that the key to it lies in the above description about the money train. I don't see how a person can spend their entire adult life being a lawyer, a lobbyist, an actor, and a politician, and not look at everything first and foremost as a money-making opportunity. Why else the reluctance to move past 527 status? Either he's overly committed to cultivating this ridiculous Bob Roberts/Lonesome Rhodes/Joe Don Baker mystique that has the dimbulbs clucking in unison, or he's figuring out how to scoot the money into his pockets after he gets the rubes into one corral and decides to mosey back to Hollywood.

Nothing else makes sense, especially in an early primary season where every week counts. The only possible candidate who would benefit from waiting to enter the race would be Al Gore. He can walk in come October, when the Democratic field will have pared down a bit, poach Bill Richardson for a running mate with serious foreign policy cred, and hit the ground running. But Thompson waiting late belies either a lack of confidence in actual (as opposed to rhetorical) gravitas and the ability to extemporize beyond mere sloganeering, or it's a testament to how truly weak the Republican field is, which means no one man -- not even Fred Thompson, goldang it -- can "save" the party.

The party is sinking on its own. Thompson offers nothing new, but rather attempts to absolve the old and the current, by lamely pointing the finger across the aisle, where even goofball Mike Gravel is a better candidate than any of the serial adulterers and jingoist troglodytes the Republicans have to offer. Fred may not be a terribly innovative political thinker, but he's certainly smart enough not to spend a year of his life auditioning to be an anchor. So my guess, once again, is that he rounds up some funds, gets a decent chunk of voters to pass off to the eventual nominee, bows out with the usual avuncular charm, and delivers the keynote speech at the '08 convention, with the promise of a Cabinet post, on the better-than-average chance that the American public loses its fucking mind once again and decides to vote out of spite instead of sense.

[Update: Reliably "objective contrarian" potato Marc Ambinder steps up to defend the missus -- who after all is a professional political consultant -- la-la-la-ing the whole time right past the transparent shell game Thompson is running. Even more amusing is one athletic supporter for Thompson's sweaty junk, who apparently was trying for some sort of haiku when he wrote, "This is news only because it is news. If it were not news, then the quitters would not get any ink and the whiners would not get any ink. It is their only way of hitting back."

Indeed. It could also be a baby's arm holding an apple. Who's to say?]