More to the point, they wanted virtually ANY of the leading RINO candidates that ran last year. Rudy would’ve been eviscerated for his Social liberalism (and the “in drag” pics wouldn’t have helped, let alone the three marriages), Huckster as the backwoods Southern buffoon, McCain (obvious), and Slick Willard (flipflopper, disastrous tenure as Governor, and belonging to a church that excluded Blacks from leadership until almost 1980 - which would’ve been a nightmare to excuse or justify for us). Notice the one candidate they DIDN’T want was Fred Thompson, and they did their best to ignore his candidacy. It’s too bad we didn’t have other first tier Conservatives to run last year, all but Fred took a pass. The liberal RINOs sure didn’t... and they damn well should’ve.
Fred Thompson took a pass on his own candidacy in 2008; he didn’t run so much as he strolled.