By Alexander J. Madison – October 15, 2007

Many conservatives across the fruited plain breathed a sigh of relief with the much delayed and much anticipated arrival of Fred Thompson into the official 2008 fray.  The pre-campaign campaign worked quite well.  It generated much buzz in both the blogosphere and the MSM.  Fred's folksy homilies on ABC radio and his Youtube broadcasts also gave him a format to address the issues of the day in his deep, southern, actor-trained voice.  Whether the topic was illegal aliens, Michael Moore, or the Virginia Tech shooting, Fred tossed out red meat to prepare the path for his eventual entry.  And considering that the 'big three' consisted of Mitt Romney, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, each with a closet full of skeletons, there was a palpable conservative hunger to satisfy.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news to the Fredheads, but I can assure you that he will not be the last man standing.  Folksy homilies aside, the closer one looks at Fred's record, the uglier it gets.  While Senator Thompson had a 'decent' voting record in his 8 years representing Tennessee, it is a record no more noteworthy than that of fellow Volunteer Staters Bill Frist or Lamar Alexander.  In fact, it is not as strong.  Worse, he and his campaign have been blowing plumes of noxious smoke in an attempt to fool conservatives that he is and has always been a rock-ribbed conservative.  After much research, I've compiled a long list of reasons why Fred will flounder in his efforts to gain the GOP nomination as the conservative torchbearer. 

Howard Baker

Fred Thompson is from the Howard Baker wing of the party.  For those too young to remember, Howard Baker is a moderate, long time public servant who has dominated Tennessee politics for decades.  The 'Great Conciliator' is an admirable fellow in some respects, but he is firmly planted in the non-conservative wing of the party.   Howard Baker is Fred Thompson's mentor.  Fred himself has said so on many occasions.  Thompson ran Baker's 1972 re-election campaign, and more significantly, supported him over one Ronald Wilson Reagan for the 1980 GOP nomination.  He did this knowing full well Reagan's brand of conservatism and Howard's lack thereof. 

Baker supported federal funding of abortion, was an ardent cheerleader for the Equal Rights Amendment, championed 'windfall profits' tax on the oil industry, and was in favor of affirmative action policies.  Yet he was and is Fred's "mentor", with this lifetime's worth of idiotic positions.  But the following excerpt from a March 1978 Time article says it all: 

"The people of the United States," he (Jimmy Carter) said, "owe a debt of thanks to the members of the U.S. Senate for their courageous action today in voting for the Panama Canal neutrality treaty. I am confident that the Senate will show the same courage and foresight when it considers the second treaty. This is a promising step toward a new era in our relationships with Panama and with all of Latin America." He singled out Byrd, Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker, Gerald Ford and John Sparkman, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations.

Bungling Chinagate

Fred Thompson, presumably due to his experience in Watergate, was tasked to investigate the China-Democratic Party fundraising scandal.  The significance of this episode cannot be overstated.  Communist Chinese, who were very busy stealing nuclear secrets, bribing the Clinton Administration for high tech sales and pirating 98% of all US software and intellectual property, were caught red-handed dumping dollars into the campaign coffers of democrat office seekers.  Yet what did Fred Thompson do?  He, along with Arlen Specter, decided to turn the investigation into a broad based "campaign finance" probe.  From an April 1997 National Review article:

From the start, Senate leadership aides have bristled at what they characterize as Thompson's arrogance and "free-lancing." They complain that he didn't consult the leadership when he first ran into trouble with Democrats on his committee and wasn't forthright about the depth of his opposition to the Lott-brokered compromise. It's unclear to what extent Thompson and his ally John McCain (R., Ariz.) worked against the Lott language among their colleagues, but leadership aides fume over the pair's efforts to spike the deal.

So instead of focusing solely on a communist regime's infiltration into our elections, Fred decided that investigating Americans for Tax Reform and the Christian Coalition was equally important.  When you have EJ Dionne cheerleading for you and a RINO like William Safire bemoaning your lack of spine, you can bet the conservative wing of the party is not happy.  We still aren't.

Trial Lawyers

When Fred Dalton Thompson claims that he cast a few votes in the Senate where he was outnumbered by wide margins, he does so as a badge of courage and/or independence.  If he meant independence from reason and logic, he would be right on the money.  But when Fred stood alone, or in a very small minority, it usually had to do with trial lawyers and the Congress' attempts to rein in these Edwardsian ambulance chasers.  Fred voted against Medical Liability tort reform as well as legislation capping the anti-tobacco company lawyer-leeches who were charging up to $92,000 an hour.  He also ran interference for the blood suckers when Congress was trying to fashion a limited liability law for the impending Y2K blitzkrieg.  In this instance, Fred's arguments about defending Federalism fall flat.  As Ramesh Ponnuru pointed out in National Review:  "The worst jurisdictions effectively set product-liability law for the entire country, because they apply their standards to companies everywhere".

But Fred continued to be trial lawyers' best friend in the Senate.  As the Washington Post's John Solomon explained in July 2007:

Unlike many Republicans during the 1990s, Thompson easily collected large sums of political donations from lawyers during his Senate career -- more than $1.5 million over eight years. The trial lobby's political action committee gave him maximum $10,000 donations during each of his two Senate campaigns.

There are plenty of good lawyers in America.  But the Association of Trial Lawyers of America is a leftwing cesspool, on par with the ACLU for the damage they inflict on society. 

Centrist Coalition

Almost from the time of his arrival in 1994, Fred Thompson gravitated towards the 'mavericks' in the US Senate.  Of course, the mavericks were defined by the MSM as those Republicans who did not take strong conservative positions, and to a lesser extent the Democrats who did not completely follow the liberal party line.  Well, Mr. Thompson seemed to be attracted to both varieties.  As he said after Jumpin' Jim Jeffords departed the GOP for Independent waters: "I'm disappointed, but I watched (his) speech, and I think he's doing it because of a matter of principle.  Fred's deference to and friendship with Jeffords is in large part due to their work together in the Centrist Coalition over several years.  Jeffords, Chafee, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe were all key Thompson allies in this group of moderates, who helped push Campaign Finance Reform over the top, after years of battles with the conservative wing of the party.  Other notables in this group of Einsteins included Bob Graham, Barbara Milkulski, Diane Feinstein, Chuck Hagel, Gordon Smith and John Edwards.  Their mission, according to South Dakota's Tim Johnson: 

"The Centrist Coalition is a group of moderate Democrats and Republicans seeking common ground and compromise on issues. ... The Centrist Coalition helps to bridge the two parties ... It brings together progressive national policy initiatives while promoting growth for businesses and increasing personal responsibility for Americans. Most South Dakotans are not left or right-wingers, but instead are right down the middle -- they simply want their government to work well and efficiently. The Centrist Coalition is a good step toward bringing the parties together."

John McCain

Not only did Fred Thompson once quip he "would follow John McCain over a cliff", he actually did follow John McCain over a cliff.  Apparently unsatisfied with supporting one moderate friend for president earlier, Fred decided in 2000 that he would do everything possible to see to it that his 'maverick', unstable buddy would have his finger on the nuclear trigger.  Fred signed up to be McCain's co-chairman for the presidency.  It should be noted that his partner in this endeavor was none other than the dingbat Chuck Hagel.  Both fawned over the 'independent' McCain.  By the time he ran for president in 1999, McCain already had more baggage than a Sampsonite factory.  And that did not even include his assault on the 1^st Amendment, which did not get final passage until 2001.  Think Keating 5.  Think member of the execrable Republican Main Street Partnership (that included the usual gang of idiots).  Think gun control.  Think Affirmative Action.  Think soft on illegal aliens.  Think tobacco regulator. Think constant foot in mouth.  There is no excuse for a grown man who claims to be a conservative supporting John McCain for Commander in Chief, without a huge dose of skepticism!  Yet Fred had this to say at the press conference when he announced his co-chairmanship for the moody moderate's campaign:

"When it comes to personal courage and integrity and the courage to do what he thinks is right, regardless of whether or not it's particularly popular at the moment, John McCain has shown characteristics of leadership like no one else I've ever seen."

Hand me the barf bag, please.

Illegal Aliens

Fred Thompson has a C minus career rating from Americans for Better Immigration and even worse ratings from Americans for Immigration Control (AIC),  earning a whopping goose egg for the period 1996-1998, according to project Vote Smart.  His record of indifference is striking.  There is nothing in the Congressional Record to indicate Thompson took even a passing interest in the raging controversies over illegals during the 1996 Immigration Reform debate.  Fred did manage to vote against an amendment during the Welfare Reform debates a year prior that would have cut off most federal benefits for illegal aliens, so I guess it would be hard to argue total indifference.  Even worse, as he campaigns for President in 2007, he whips out the "one day WE awoke" nonsense.  From Fox News:

WALLACE: Well, let me put up on the screen something that you said last year about illegals, and let's take a look at it. "You're going to have to, in some way, work out a deal where they can have some aspirations of citizenship but not make it so easy that it's unfair to the people waiting in line and abiding by the law."

Now, you said, "Look, it's just not realistic that we're going to round up 12 million people and ship them all out of the country."

THOMPSON: Well, that's true, as a general statement. We woke up one day after years of neglect and apparently discovered that we have somewhere between 12 million and 20 million illegal aliens in this country. So it became an impossible situation to deal with.

Of all the blathering by all of the campaigning wannabes, this is THE most disingenuous crap I've heard.  Fred Thompson was fully informed of the stampede of illegal aliens during weeks of Senate testimony and debate in 1996.  He was fully aware that Duncan Hunter was fighting against the Clinton Administration to get a border fence built, since it fell under his committee's jurisdiction, and he was aware of Rudy Giuliani's lawsuit to protect his precious illegals from deportation and de-funding in NYC.  Yet instead of joining the fight with the Hunters and Tancredos and Simpsons,   Fred dutifully ignored the rightwing patriots, who clearly stood against the illegal invasion.  I guess if you have backs to slap in the Centrist Coalition, it would look bad to appear to be one of those guys.

Republican Platform

It was indeed Fred Thompson's disdain for the socially conservative stances that made him proclaim the GOP platform in 1996 to be "the most useless device I've ever heard of".  It certainly could not have been the platform's calls for slashing taxes or maintaining peace through superior firepower, could it?  When Bob Dole abruptly dropped his new push for "tolerance" from his campaign rhetoric, Thompson was right in line bemoaning it.  According to the August 8, 1996 Knoxville News-Sentinnel:

The appeasing of social conservatives by dropping the tolerance proposal knocked ``an extremely important and very good'' economic and tax proposal off the front pages of newspapers across the country, Thompson said.

``It should have been foreseen this (the abortion issue) would take away'' from the impact of a major tax-cut proposal.

Thompson said the theory the abortion language was dropped to dampen the possible controversy of picking an abortion-rights running mate is reasonable thinking.

But he added: ``That implies a calculated, well-thought-out move, and I hope there is some of that going on.''

Add to this Thompson's 1996 statement "Does anyone remember what was in the last, except abortion? … If we get caught up in having a platform debate and stuff like that, we deserve to lose" and his 1997 letter to a constituent saying "that government should not interfere with individual convictions and actions in this area", and you can bet your bottom dollar that abortion was the driving factor behind Fred's efforts to kill the platform.  According to Human Event's Terry Jeffries, Thompson argued to do just that.

And after Colin Powell's speech at the 1996 GOP convention, where he exhalted the 'big tent', where the pro-choice position was an acceptable republican position, Thompson gushed that it was "a speech as close to perfection as you could come.''

Enough said.

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Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3, where I explore Thompson's rhetoric and record on abortion, campaign finance reform, Tennessee pork, education, faux federalism, the environment, and other interesting voyages of moderation…..