Posted on 11/04/2007 6:37:35 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I had said Fred Thompson could do him a lot of good if he passed “the Russert primary” with flying colors.
His campaign had been dismissing the Washington press corps, and implicitly running against the media, refusing to do the things candidates traditionally do (enter early, do five events a day, appear at the New Hampshire debate instead of the Tonight Show). But every once in a while a Washington media institution really does matter, and Meet the Press is one of them. Simply because Tim Russert, without commercial interruption, will throw hardballs and curveballs for a solid half hour, and standard delaying tactics won’t work. Also, his research staff can find every awkward quote from 1974 that every candidate dreads. Generally, a candidate who can handle Meet the Press well can handle just about any other live interview.
This morning I had caught a brief snippet – his discussion of Iraq - and thought he was striking out. I thought the reference to “generals we respect” was so odd, I wondered if he had forgotten David Petraeus’s name.
Having just watched it on the DVR, I thought it was a very, very solid performance. Ground rule double.
My initial shallow thought was that Thompson still looks a bit on the gaunt side. Then, during the interview:
“You’ve lost a lot of weight. Is it health related?”
“Coming from you, Tim, I’ll take that as a compliment.” Ouch. Thompson says no, it’s not health related, it’s just that his wife has him on a diet to watch his cholesterol. He says he had additional tests for his Lymphoma in September and was the results were all clear.
Every once in a while Thompson slipped up - I think he suggested that oil was selling at “nah-eight hundred dollars a barrel”, and I’m wary of his quoted statistic that car bombs in Iraq are down 80 percent – but overall, Thompson was measured, modest, serious, and completely at ease. After a couple of debates, it’s odd to watch a man not trying to squeeze his talking points into an answer, and instead speaking in paragraphs, conversational and informed.
Jen Rubin wrote, “He does not answer questions linearly with a direct answer to the question but rather talks about the subject matter. Some find this thoughtful and other think he is vamping and unfocused.” His talk on Iran was a perfect example, in that Thompson’s position isn’t terribly different from the rest of the field – he doesn’t want to use force, but he’ll keep that option open - but as he talks at length about the risks and benefits and factors that would go into a military strike, the audience, I think, will feel reassuring that if Thompson needs to face that decision, he will have weighed each option carefully.
That voice is fatherly, reassuring, calm. The contrast to Hillary couldn’t be sharper.
I’m going to say ‘well-briefed,’ but I know that will just spur one of the Thompson Associates to call me to tell me that’s not a sign of others briefing him, that’s a sign of Thompson’s own reading and study of the issues.
I was about to say that he was almost too conversational, that he could have used one quip or pithy summation at his views, and then, finally, at the tail end of his question on Schiavo, he summed up, “the less government, the better.”
I’m hearing that David Brody listened to the section on abortion and Thompson’s expression of federalism in this area, and has concluded, “all he needs now is to buy the gun that shoots him in the foot.” Look, if Fred Thompson isn’t pro-life enough for social conservatives, then nobody short of Mike Huckabee is. If Huckabee gets the nomination, great, I’d love to see Hillary Clinton go up against the Republican mirror-image of her husband’s rhetorical skills. But it feels like the past few months have been an escalating series of vetoes from various factions within the GOP. I’ve seen more amiable compromises on the United Nations Security Council.
Let me lay it out for every Republican primary voter. You support the guy you want, you rally for him, you write some checks, you vote in the primaries… and maybe your guy wins, maybe he loses. If the guy who beats your guy is half a loaf, you shrug your shoulders, hope your guy is his running mate, and get ready for the general. Life goes on.
Just listened to it like 5 times in a row and what Thompson said was "98", slight pause, "100 dollars a barrel".
In other words the mistake comes from the fact in my opinion at least was that Thompson's pause was a very small one.
I do.
If Thompson was a true federalist, he would stand for the right to life as guaranteed by our Constitution, and not pretend the unborn aren't covered by the Fourteenth Amendment.
It is untenable to say we can both overturn Roe and deny the unborn constitutional protection. The only legitimate basis for overturning Roe is to recognize the personhood of the unborn, and deny all mothers the "right" to kill. Otherwise, destroying the valueless fetus is just a private medical decision the woman has the right to make.
As a nation, we either respect the right to life, or we don't.
...Tim Russert, without commercial interruption, will throw hardballs and curveballs for a solid half hour....
&&
Depends on who is being interviewed, apparently. There was a time when I thought Russert did a good job, and I used to watch him regularly until the day I saw him interview Hillary Clinton when she was running for the Senate. After I watched him throw fluff her way the whole time, my opinion of him dropped like a stone. I have not watched his program since.
MR. RUSSERT: This is the 2004 Republican Party platform, and here it is: “We say the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution,” “we endorse legislation to make it clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. Our purpose is to have legislative and judicial protection of that right against those who perform abortions.” Could you run as a candidate on that platform, promising a human life amendment banning all abortions?
MR. THOMPSON: No.
MR. RUSSERT: You would not?
MR. THOMPSON: No. I have always—and that’s been my position the entire time I’ve been in politics. I thought Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. I think this platform originally came out as a response to particularly Roe v. Wade because of that. Before Roe v. Wade, states made those decisions. I think people ought to be free at state and local levels to make decisions that even Fred Thompson disagrees with. That’s what freedom is all about.
MR. RUSSERT: And also with gay marriage, according to the Associated Press: “Thompson favors a constitutional amendment that bars judges from legalizing gay marriage, but also leaves open the door for state legislatures to approve the practice.” So if a state said, “We want to have gay marriages in our state,” you would be OK with that?
MR. THOMPSON: Yes. This, this, this—the—marriage is between a man and a woman. Nobody ever thought that that was contested until recently, and we’ve had a couple judges in a couple states decide to turn all that on its head. So we’ve, we’ve had, again, a judge-created problem. I would support a constitutional amendment that addresses this judge-created problem. But at the end of—and, and say judges can’t do that. But, at the end of the day, if a state legislature and a governor decide that that’s what they want to do, yes, they should have, they, they should have the freedom to do what Fred Thompson thinks is a very bad idea.
MR. RUSSERT: In March of ‘05, the Congress, the president signed legislation allowing a federal judge to intervene, to perhaps re-insert a feeding tube in the famous Terri Schiavo case.
MR. THOMPSON: Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: You’ve spoken about that, about the death of your own daughter. Your view is it is a family’s decision to make whether to insert or remove a feeding tube.
MR. THOMPSON: Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: And that should...
MR. THOMPSON: And then, and then, obviously, in consultation with their doctor.
MR. RUSSERT: But there should be no laws involved?
MR. THOMPSON: No. I’ve not said that. What—I mean, you, you got to put your lawyer hat back on, you know, with this most personal, should be nonlegal consideration. If there is a family dispute, then there’re courts in, in every state in the nation that you can take a dispute like that to. I said the federal government should not be involved.
MR. RUSSERT: But the government should not have gotten involved in Terri Schiavo?
MR. THOMPSON: No.
Most constitutional scholars would disagree vehemently with this statement. I'll only say that it seems monumentally ignorant of the law in general and the specifics of Roe v. Wade in particular.
and based on your propensity to look to the Federal Government to enforce your views on others, you are one yourself.
Remember the definition of a liberal as someone who believes that "the problems of society are due mostly and mainly to the shorcomings of others." Fits you to a "Tee".
If you don't like being called a "liberal", then let's call you a "statist". But then, like you say:... a liberal is a liberal is a liberal ...
If that's so, then the Federalist Papers are its heart and soul, and are equally indispensible to a clear and complete understanding of what the Framers intended when they enacted the Constitution.
Unthinking lemmings, perhaps.
Read Roe. Blackmun conceded that the decision falls apart if the unborn are protected by the Fourteenth--that is, if they are actually persons that require equal protection under the law.
The only opposition to abortion, in logic and law, is that the child has the right to life. If the child has no right to life, it is a valueless thing we should not concern ourselves with, and we should not interfere with the mother's choice in so personal a matter.
But if the unborn child does have the right to life, no state could sanction its killing any more than the murder of any other human being.
Obviously false.
As INDIVIDUALS, we may either respect the right to life or we don't, but there is obviously no such consensus on a national scale.
If there were, laws against abortion would be as commonplace and non-controversial as laws against murder, cannibalism, and dismemberment.
There would be no movement calling for Federalism of the issue, any more than there is now a national movement to make cannibalism a Federal crime.
You said, in essence, that Blackmun's postulated scenario was the only "legitimate basis" for overturning Roe. That's just wrong. There is PLENTY wrong with Roe quite aside from this issue, and I will tell you this; if Roe is ever overturned it surely won't be on these 14th Amendment grounds.
You have got to be kidding.
The consensus exists in the Preamble to the Constitution, which states that the entire purpose of our Union is to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. The document then goes on to expressly forbid the deprivation of life, and solidifies that guarantee further in the Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Protecting life is the most basic tenet of our national creed. Without this, government has no legitimacy or purpose.
The only alternative is to argue that the right to privacy does not exist, simply because it is unenumerated, which would violate the Ninth Amendment.
That is illegitimate because if your crusade is against privacy, you would attack the precedent on which privacy was established pre-Roe. And yet, you target Roe and not those cases. Why? Presumably, because there is a child's life involved.
It is the taking of a child's life that makes us disturbed by Roe. The issue then comes down to whether that life has a right to exist or not. The very foundation of our nation states that it does. The child has the right to life equal to our own.
Purists? I doubt it. Nobody would is so fanatical to think that the fate of this country hangs on their one issue which they elevate to THE ISSUE is just a purist. I think fanatical is more like it. And the sooner they are disavowed, the sooner the rest of us can go about trying to have a reasonable government in this country. They are separatists if you ask me.
Hey, good post.
FR has become the home, bastion, fort of the prolife fanatics who would visit their definitions on all of us by law.
I have seen some morph into calling birth control abortion. I am expecting any day to read that no sexual act that doesn’t result in a baby is sinful.
This one issue, deeply felt by some, is not the burning issue of the day to others. Surely not the issue on which decent people should be damned.
Like Thompson. I think he did well. If he had said that the whole abortion issue was not an issue that he thought was worthy of comment, I would have still felt he did well.
I don’t know about that. I work on a college campus and would be loathe to see citizens who are drunk all weekend and have the judgement of fleas to be carrying weapons.
If you live in a college area you would know exactly what I mean.
College campuses are places where the rules exist for a pretty good reason. Sure the same 18 year olds in the army can go around armed but they are subject to immense control of their behavior. Young college men are no comparison.
Anybody who turned against Thompson or any candidate based on that position has a narrow view of what is important now. And arming young people on campus is not important compared to what we face as a country.
THere is no consensus and that is the crux of the argument. That is the place where we are and no law will bring about a consensus about this issue.
I strongly, but respectfully disagree. IMO, your ‘description’ (which seems to be held widespread among the supporters of top tier candidates) is an attempt to redefine conservatism. You may call conservatives with strong positions on key issues separatists or fanatics, but IMO, the ‘reasonable’ government you’re looking for is RHINO and will result in more of the same. It is conservatives who must disavow each and every attempt at moderation.
He almost lost me right there. timmy matters only to himself.
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