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.
You can take much comfort in your own purity of thought, ideals and action. Meanwhile, nobody is paying the slightest attention.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and that's what states are for.
I simply want to win the next election to keep Hillary out of power.
If your pro-life beliefs lead you to prefer Hillary over Fred or "fill in the blank" then this forum has lost its reason to exist.
Go vote for Hillary, or, just as effective, don't vote for the Republican nominee, and live with the legacy of her rule.
You heart will be pure, but our country will suffer.
Nothing is "non-negotiable" in the real world.
We all need to get a clue.
I guess the first casualty in your world would be the Constitution.
If I am, then God help us all.
Except for the fact that it is the pretext for the entire document.
Nowhere in the Constitution itself can you find the idea that the preamble is not binding. In fact, nowhere in the document is it even called a preamble. We just call it that for the reasons of identification. It is the cornerstone for the Constitution, laid first, intrinsic to any decent understanding of it.
Are you suggesting a new Civil War?
It’s you that’s fixated on Hillary, not me. No decent human being would ever cast a vote for that corrupt Leftist.
FR is, as Jim has said many, many times, here as a vehicle to fight liberalism. And nothing is more liberal, in the pejorative sense, than the destruction of the very reasons for the existence of government in general, and our government in particular.
Cite me ONE instance of a prescriptive statement that could even potentially be considered a binding provision in the "preamble".
Then cite me even ONE case where a decision of the Supreme Court was grounded in that statement.
I'll wait.
Rove, is that you?
Is the Preamble the pretext for the document or not?
Why would you excise the paragraph that the founders gave us to understand what was to follow?
while I disagree that the WBTS was simply over slavery, ending abortion could be a fight one day
no doubt....amongst many other culture issues
it’s killed many times the number the North American bound slave trade did...and counting.
Fred seems ambivalent.
it’s one thing to say you can’t get a constitutional amendment to ban abortion outright versus you don’t want one
that is what troubles me about Fred
as much as George Bush aggravates me on some issues I imagine he would support such an amendment
According to the writers and signers of the Declaration of Independence, that's what all human government is for, explicitly. And most particularly the government they were setting up. The United States of America.
In terms of personalities you are spot on.
I'm not either. That's why I've made my viws abundantly clear. I'll fight any party that doesn't stand for equality before the law, the personhood of every individual, and the Constitution of the United States. Just as hard as I fight the Democrats.
America already has one evil party. It doesn't need a second.
The signers of the Declaration of Independence weren’t setting up any government at all. They were declaring that the colonies, the predecessors of our present day States, were henceforth independent of England.
Later, these same States relinquished SOME of their powers to the newly created Federal Government. But, the vehicle by which THAT was accomplished was NOT the Declaration of Independence. Not by YEARS.
The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are two DIFFERENT documents with differing significance for our history and for our jurisprudence.
Please get a grip on reality.
It is impossible to rightly understand the Constitution apart from the Declaration. The Declaration is the spirit of the Constitution.
I'm not sure what you mean by "pretext". The Constitution embodies every word from first to last, but not all the words are imbued with equal importance or significance.
Why would you excise the paragraph that the founders gave us to understand what was to follow?
Of course, I would not excise any part of the Constitution. Neither would I elevate any part of it to a status that does not naturally accrue to it by virtue of its place in the document and the significance and import of its content. Some parts that may be very inspirational have little or no juriprudential relevance.
Your devotion to the Declaration of Independence is apparently at least equal to mine. It is literally one of the finest expressions of the human impulse to freedom and self determination ever penned by the hand of man. I could call it inspirational, and it would be an understatement. But despite my love for the document, I would not be honest if I did not concede the fact that it does not have jurisprudential significance.
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