FRED VETS, SIGN UP TODAY AT:
Posted on 09/14/2007 12:23:03 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson kicked off his Florida tour in Jacksonville Thursday morning, emphasizing his conservative values and connecting with the crowd by talking about his accent, his children and college football.
"What Floridians do is going to be important to the future of our country," the actor and former U.S. senator from Tennessee told a crowd of about 200 people at The Jacksonville Landing. Thompson said he was happy to be among people who didn't find his accent funny.
Still, a Quinnipiac University poll of released this week showed Thompson trailing front-runner Rudy Giuliani by 11 percentage points in a poll of 438 Republican voters in Florida. The poll's margin of error of was 4.7 percentage points.
State Rep. Aaron Bean introduced Thompson, who launched into a 20-minute speech outlining his support of the Second Amendment and lower taxes and his opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion and so-called activist judges. He criticized the No Child Left Behind law and other federal regulations that hamstring state and local authorities.
"Our basic laws don't come from government, they come from God," he said, while audience cheers muffled his addendum: "And from the Constitution."
On Iraq, Thompson said he believed in the success of the U.S. strategy in Iraq but doesn't think the country has come to terms with the fact that "we are in a global war with radical Islam." He said the country has learned lessons from the Iraq war but needs to show determination, not division.
He described himself as someone who doesn't need the presidency to "pad my resume" but feels called to the job. He mentioned his desire to do something for the generation of his children, ages 4 and 10 months, and said voters could connect with him.
(Excerpt) Read more at jacksonville.com ...
Ping!
But in his case I believe people will like him more once they hear him talk about the issues. He has an intelligence and a reasonable way of talking, a clarity, many other candidates are lacking.
Can you imagine him and Hillary in a debate?
I saw Fred yesterday, he speaks common sense and emphasized our core beliefs. I was impressed.
Popcorn on standby.....
FRED VETS, SIGN UP TODAY AT:
The problem for Rudy in Florida is that his “firewall” there is made out of chicken wire. Florida is a closed primary. In other words, only registered Republicans can vote in it. Thus, the fact that he is doing well vis a vis other Republicans in southern Florida with New York transplants will do him no good in the Primary (or, for that matter, in the general election, since the transplnteed New Yorkers break at least 5-1 for the Democrat)
I suspect that Some of the polls showing Rudy with a lead in Florida are achieving this result by sampling an equal number of Republican leaning voters in every region, which would overstate Rudy’s strength, since most of the Republican voters are in the panhandle (from Pensacala over to Jacksonville and around Orlando, which are very socially conservative regions). Fred will bury Rudy in those areas, and the few Republican votes he picks up in Miami Dade and Broward (in the south) will not come close to making up that deficit.
Of course, you will not hear this from the so-called pundits at NRO and Amspec who know nothing about Republican primary politics and much, much less about Republican primary politics in the South. Boy, are they in for a surprise!
Notice they only quote the poll in which Fred is down. There was another one within the last few days in which he polled above Giuliani.
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