Tommy needs to fade away. Now is not the time for compromise and establishment politics.
You are 100% accurate on that statement....this crap about "Centrist" is poliitic-code for "RINO", and caving on principle.
The other politic-code word is "Moderate", meaning you vote with Democrats, and call yourself "Republican" (Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Pansey Graham, etc.).
It's one thing to negotiate terms of an idea, but it's a totally different animal to sway from CORE PRINCIPLES, AND CONTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES. If it ain't in the Constitution, it ain't needed to be made into "Law" by politicians and Activist Judges.
Look around; see what "moderate" has done to this once-great Country.
What can I say about Tommy Thompson? He was around when I was still living in Wisconsin, middle 1970’s, and he had a reputation then for standing up to the doctrinaire liberal Democrats, many of whom were down at the other end of State Street, on the UW-Madison campus. I supported him then, and I still support him today. And didn’t he have some time put in with the Bush Administration? So he already knows where some of the bodies are buried in the bowels of the “administrative branch”, and could ask the right questions when these (bureauc)rats are hauled before hearings up on Capitol Hill in Washington.