Fred Thompson is a Bigot

Apparently, for Fred Thompson, the most important criteria for President is whether the candidate has a penis. I would argue that a brain is more important and that since Thompson has neither, he should get out of the race now before his fast-fading campaign becomes even more of an embarrassment to his Party.

Yesterday, in the context of his remarks about Bhutto's brutal assassination, no less, Thompson observed that no women in America is up to the job of being President. No, no, this was not a slip of the tongue: he has repeated this stunningly sexist opinion twice this week, and that indicates that he is tossing out red meat for his Party faithful. Earlier this month, when Thompson was asked to name his "favorite possession," he glibly replied, "trophy wife." And yet, he continues to poll in double digits among Republicans. Amazing, really.

I can promise you this: a Democratic candidate for President who thought that it was all in good fun to refer to his wife as a "possession" or a "trophy" or who announced that women are unqualified for the nation's highest office, would have zero chance of getting elected dog catcher much less getting the Party's nomination for President. Yet, I haven't heard any Republicans-even the women-banging on podiums to disavow Thompson's remarks, have you? And there in lies the problem for the Republican Party.

There are a long list of reasons I support John Edwards in the Democratic primary, but Hillary Clinton's gender is not one of them. She, along with a long list of other women in this country, are infinitely more qualified to be President than a backwoods bigot from Tennessee who is so out of touch with mainstream America that he doesn't realize-or doesn't care-that he just royally pissed off more than half of the electorate. Fred needs to have his limo driver take him around back so he can jump in his faux-red pickup truck and drive himself back to Tennessee. Perhaps he can pick up his good friend Scooter Libby along the way.

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New Poll: Edwards Handily Leads Giuliani, Thompson

Today, a new Rasmussen poll again confirms that John Edwards is the most electable of all the Democratic candidates, besting Giuliani by nine points, Thompson by ten points and attracting 50% support in their latest national telephone survey. Edwards has consistently out-preformed other Democrats in general elections match-ups. We have a unique opportunity-perhaps a once in a generation opportunity-to nominate the candidate who is both the most progressive and the most likely to win. You can help do just that by making a contribution today. Your contributions, up to $250.00 will be matched by federal election funds, so there's no better time to give.

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Fred Had a Bad Day

It was a rough day for Fred Thompson, the "Johnny I'm Coming, I'm Coming, I Swear I'm Coming Lately" savior of the GOP's casting call for a remake of "Grumpy Old Men."

Per Talking Points Memo, in a private email obtained by the Associated Press, Fred got this critique from none other than Focus on the Family's James Dobson:

Isn't Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a Constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won't talk at all about what he believes, and can't speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?" Dobson wrote.
"He has no passion, no zeal, and no apparent 'want to.' And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!"

Not for me, either, James.

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Perfectly Plastic

I don't want a perfectly plastic president, and with that in mind, I have a few thoughts about Fred Thompson and his announcement in Des Moines yesterday.

1) Where was the crowd? Apparently, only about 200 people showed up for the announcement, though his campaign claims the attendance was 400. Campaign math requires dividing any estimate of crowd size, coming from the campaign, by 2. I believe that I could get more than 200 of my family and close friends to show up if I were announcing a run for school board, much less, president. This was at least an organizational failing on the part of the campaign. Jay Wagner blogged, "But the room itself might be able to handle 50 at most." This was not exactly a Fred frenzy.

2) The Iowa Independent live blogged the event, and I was struck by this note:
2:23: "Thompson still seems to have his audience riveted. A women just collapsed in the audience--I'm not sure what happened but it hasn't had any impact on the former senator's flawless delivery." I don't want a president who can have a women collapse in his audience and be unmoved and able to stay entirely on script. Can you for one minute imagine John and Elizabeth Edwards ignoring that women?

3) Finally, this is foreboding. "People are also amazed at the custom-made stage that Thompson will use to make his announcement. It is built to resemble granite and has large video screens built into it."

Folks, George Bush, III has put on Ronald Reagan's clothes, and he's running for President. They are about to engage in political theater that will make the 2004 RNC look like a high school play. He is the greatest threat to a Democrat winning, and is already running on the line that he can stop Hillary. National polls indicate that paired up against her, he just might be right. John Edwards on the other hand, continues to beat him and all the GOP candidates in head-to-head match ups.

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New Tracking Poll: Edwards and Obama Tied

As John and Elizabeth Edwards head to Georgia for the convocation at Georgia Southwestern in Americus tomorrow, Rasmussen's daily tracking poll shows that Sen. Edwards and Sen. Obama are tied at 18% in national polling while questions about Clinton's electability continue. Edwards now leads Giuliani by 8 and Thompson by 14. Some pundits predicted that Obama would "hit a wall" by the end of summer. Is that what is happening now? I don't know, but more and more, this appears to be a race between Clinton and Edwards.

If you come to Georgia Southwestern tomorrow at noon, you can hear from Sen. Edwards. He will speak AND answer questions from those in attendance.

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Fred the Fake: The Ultimate Washington Insider

How ironic that, according to The Marietta Daily Journal, Sen. Eric Johnson has dubbed Fred Thompson a "down to earth candidate" for whom there is "no political correctness." While Johnson was spinning the truth on the floor of the Georgia Senate to make sure Genarlow Wilson stayed in jail, Fred Thompson was working just as hard to make sure Scooter Libby never saw the inside of a cell.

In 2006, Thompson served on the advisory board for Libby's legal defense fund and hosted a fundraiser for Libby at his home. So, while Johnson was working to make sure that one jury's verdict stood, without regard to truth or justice, Thompson was working to make sure another jury's verdict was up-ended, again without regard for truth or justice. Is their mutual lack of regard for what is just what Johnson refers to as "down to earth"? It's hard to know, but I can see what they have in common.

I agree that this actor can act down to earth, like when he rented a red pick up truck and used it as a campaign prop during the Tennessee senate campaign so he could pretend to be every man's man. The truth is that Fred Thompson is an actor, a lawyer, a lobbyist and the ultimate Washington insider. Don't buy the act.

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Unreasonable Politics

Fred Thompson, who has been teasing Republicans with the possibility of his candidacy, wowed a crowd of Florida Young Republicans yesterday with nothing other than his declaration that The New York Times and Hillary Clinton had made him their top target and that "the United States is the greatest nation." He rebuffed a reporter's questions about him lobbying for pro-choice groups with a reference to fat flies buzzing in the summer time? What? I don't know, but my instant mental image was of big, greenish, flies, buzzing around a pile of horse manure. Ick.

Fred Thompson, he of thin resume, must've been reading Dr. Drew Westen's The Political Brain. Westen, Director of Clinical Psychology at Emory, has conducted research on the human brain that points to the dominance of emotion over reason in political decision-making. (Click here for a really cool interactive model of how the brain works.) Thompson is expertly appealing to the "emotional brain,"and despite what rational thought dictates, I think that he is the greatest threat Democrats face in 2008.

Democrats need to learn from Westen. I'm looking forward to meeting him and hearing from him on Tuesday. We need to learn from our own experiences, too. We are far too quick to rely on reason, far too cognitively oriented. That works great for governance, not so great for winning elections. I refer you to the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 2004 as one of the worst examples of our ineptness on this front. The Republicans set design was brilliant. The stage was the Presidential seal, in the center of the floor, and seemed to be at the level of the people. The Democrat's visual did not hold a candle to this, and it was at the moment I saw it that I began to question whether Kerry could really win this thing. You'll recall that he was generally ahead in the polls at that point.

It's not that Democrats have never gotten it. Bill Clinton, the "man from Hope," who changes a room just by walking into it, clearly gets it. He connects with people, makes them believe he understands, and that he cares about them. FDR got it. He reached out to the nation with his promise of a "New Deal." He wasn't perfect, but he touched people where they were suffering and gave them hope. As I watch the candidates debate, I don't think we're there yet this year, but I do think that Edwards and Obama offer the best hope of getting us there.

There is a catch to this approach, one that Republicans tripped squarely over during the mid-term elections. Voters hate hypocrisy. What could've been a powerful symbol of Republican leadership-the "Mission Accomplished" banner on board the aircraft carrier-was premature and ultimately stuck like tar paper to Republican Party and their candidates becoming a symbol of the ineptness and arrogance of the current administration. Likewise, the President's recent commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence is a very important, emotional flash point for many Americans. This arrogant, lawless administration now has a poster child, and his name is Scooter-a name that evokes images of nannies, prep school and privilege.

I wrote some about the concept of "brain-stem voting" last year. I had not at that time read Westen's research. Buy his book and read it. Unless Democrats get our hands around Westen's research, and implement communication strategies that reflect the fact that emotion trumps reason in political discourse, in November of 2008, we will find ourselves wondering why we lost the election to a B-List actor.

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The Real "Gay Bomb"

The Gay Bomb (a recently resurrected 2005 story) and Fred Thompson have something in common: special placement on Paul Harvey's daily radio program.

This morning, I was listening to the radio and caught a bit of Paul Harvey. He did a story claiming that the United States military has admitted working on, and then discarding, technology to create a "Gay Bomb." He said that the idea was to drop a non-lethal bomb that would contain high levels of hormones and aphrodisiacs rendering troops so interested in having sex with each other, they would be unable to fight. Don't even get me started about the implications of this mindset for our gay men and women who are currently serving in our own military.

Initially, I thought it was just absolute homophobic crap, but a quick Google search has me asking another question. Turns out, this story was reported by the BBC in 2005, and it was also reported on FOX in 2005. If this story broke in 2005, then why are Harvey (click here and then scroll down and click on Wednesday AM to listen) and other American news outlets reporting this today as news? The answer is easy: it's nothing other than blatant, fear-mongering propaganda.

Neither is it an accident that in 2006 none other than Sen. Fred Thompson (as in, I'm sort of running for President Fred Thompson) signed on as Paul Harvey's substitute. Those of us old enough to remember will recall that before he ran for President, Ronald Regan also spent a good deal of time on the radio. I can recall my father listen to the radio as he got ready for work in the mornings, blood pressure rising as Regan talked. This is, as that was, a calculated, strategic use of "mainstream media."

It is crystal clear that fear of and bigotry regarding gays will be a weapon in the arsenal of the GOP during the upcoming battle for the Presidency. From the attacks on Sen. Edwards to the support of "don't ask, don't tell" in the military, the radical right wing of the Republican party appears to have been given free reign to wage this campaign of hate.

Now, does someone out there want to argue with me about the "objectivity" of mainstream media?

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