Posted on 01/21/2008 2:14:55 AM PST by trumandogz
While other Republican presidential candidates turned their focus to Florida on Sunday, Fred Thompson turned his attention to his ailing mother and his ailing campaign.
Thompson’s run for the White House may have hit a wall after suffering a stinging setback Saturday in South Carolina, where Thompson had essentially moved his entire operation and needed a strong finish, which he did not get.
The South’s first primary saw the former Tennessee senator finish a distant third to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, respectively.
After the loss, Thompson’s speech to his supporters left the impression that the once-looked-upon candidate to unite the Republican Party would be bowing out of the presidential race.
“I’m not sure there’s any real rationale to stay in because it hasn’t happened,” said Steve Gill, a conservative talk show host who penned a book on Thompson’s candidacy, adding that Thompson “got too far behind and dug too deep a hole” to save what once was a promising candidacy.
Gill on Sunday said Thompson’s campaign is “pretty much done,” noting that the campaign was not aggressively refuting speculation that he was dropping out.
A call to Thompson’s campaign headquarters went unanswered. A spokeswoman did not return a call on her cell phone.
Bruce Oppenheimer, a Vanderbilt University political science professor, said yesterday that the “only real purpose” of Thompson’s candidacy at this point was helping McCain, a close ally of his while the two served in the Senate.
Oppenheimer said it’s “hard to see” where Thompson can break into the upper-tier and do well on “Super Tuesday” besides his home state of Tennessee.
“I don’t know if it’s the end for him, but this is a campaign that’s on life support and it’s a real question about whether the patient can breath on his own,” Oppenheimer said.
Thompson’s strategy in South Carolina partly centered on going after Huckabee aggressively. But Thompson failed to sway nearly enough South Carolinians to dent the other southern conservative in the race.
Huckabee received more than 125,000 votes, nearly doubling Thompson’s 66,580.
Juan Williams, a National Public Radio and Fox News political analyst, said Huckabee is the southern conservative who has “some chance of going forward.”
Not so for Thompson, Williams said, noting that he did not travel immediately to Florida, which is the site of the next Republican primary.
“I think he was retreating,” Williams said Sunday morning on Fox News. “And you know, happy trails.”
Instead of heading to Florida, Thompson visited his mother in the hospital, according to media reports. She has been battling pneumonia.
If Thompson were to drop out of the race, his name would still be on the ballot when Tennessee has its presidential primary elections Feb. 5. Early voting has already begun.
A Thompson exit could spur Republican candidates who were previously willing to concede the Volunteer State to make an effort to win here.
Gill said if Thompson does indeed intend to drop out, he should do so immediately to give other GOP presidential candidates time to spread their message in Tennessee.
“If he stays in, all he does is deny Tennessee voters the chance to really have their voices heard,” Gill said.
In the South Carolina speech on Saturday, Thompson often spoke in the past tense and thanked his supporters repeatedly and ended his speech by encouraging them to “stand strong” for their conservative beliefs.
“My friends, we will always be bound by a close bond because we have traveled a very special road together for a very special purpose,” Thompson said.
At this point with an ailing mother and young children at home, I could understand why Fred may want to step off the campaign trail.
On to St. Paul!
Interesting that the naysayers are all out in Tenn this AM.
Fred edges out the front runner in SC and they say he is on life support?
It's a tough pill to swallow, but he is pretty much on life support.
What's Plan B?
February 5th is the big day for the Republicans, and Missouri is the only southern state that has a winner-take-all prize. That does not bode well for Huckabee or McCain. They are cash strapped, and will have a very difficult chance of winning the large winner-take-all states.
I will support Fred as long as he is in, but I I suspect the race is going to come down to Rudy and Romney.
cmon fred get out of the way for the
MIT EXPRESS...
lets all UNITE AROUND MIT....
if fred wants the vp spot.....all the better....
but we need somebody solid in the white house...
a business man who knows how to turn america back to
capitalism and a completely free market economy unhampered by confiscatory taxation....
save the republic elect someone who knows business and will champion the unleashing of american know how....not some class warfare mongering idiot.
YOUR COMMENTS ARE INVITED.
I’ll stick with Fred, thank you.
Worst election ever...
yer ridin for a fall MISSY
JOIN US FOR WHAT’S BEST FOR AMERICA....
ALL ABOARD ONTO THE ROMNEY RAILWAY TO THE NEXT PRESIDENCY OF
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.....
put down your purple kool-aid cups and hoist a cup of cheer to the
GREAT MIT!
AUUU RAH!
1932 redux.
LLS
LLS
No way Jose... The “mitt express” is going full steam to liberalville... I only want to go to Conservatown. Sorry.
LLS
No need to add anything to that about the state of Thompson's candidacy.
If Fred stays in now, it will be for the sole purpose of helping McCain.
First of all, businessmen make very poor political leaders - completely different skill set. The government is not a business. Study the Craig Benson disaster in NH for a recent example.
Second of all, why would Mitt being a businessman help turn America back to capitalism? Big business is aggressively anticapitalist, and works constantly with government to rig the game against small business and US workers.
If the job description was Administrator of the Executive Branch, Mitt would be perfect.
But it's much, much more than that.
Everybody has heard what you said.
I challenged somebody, it may have been you, to show us what you've got in January 2008.
Now we know. 15% of the GOP electorate, zero independents, zero Democrats.
So, although you can wreck the Republican nominee (Unless it's McCain, who can win without you), you can't do anything else.
This nihilistic "give me what I want or I'll shoot this dog" approach to politics has gotten you zero.
Where do YOU think it's going?
Care to speculate who Fred might endorse if he does drop out?
In the end it will cancel out. If we let them ring the bell, they will think that they are driving the train.
Fred must win. He’s the only one telling the truth.
The question about the rest of the candidates is this: since the use of deception is the only way they can get votes, how do they feel about themselves when they go to sleep at night?
Especially the ones who claim to be Christian, and the ones endorsed by the pro-atheist NEA (that’s you, Huckabee).
And what about the candidates claiming to support the military? Who were they supporting when they railed against Guantanamo (that’s you, McCain) or when they degraded our President and our Secretary of Defense during a time of war, thus emboldening our enemy and likely causing more troop deaths (that’s you McCain).
How can we think of McCain as anything but a traitor?
A vote for anyone but Fred is a vote for Hillary or Obama, which translates into a vote for terrorists.
How do you tell the difference between John McCain and a jihad terrorist?
McCain is the one more likely to explode into a blind rage.
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