Just in case there is a god, I’m going to start praying now that this comes true:
Actor and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson didn’t make it far in his campaign for the presidency, but another national political role may be in his future.
There is word Thompson is considering running for chairperson of the Republican National Committee.
That means he would be the public face of the party.
UPDATE: I looked through the archives and found these two molding oldies (here and here). I forgot all about Macaca. Fred is exactly what the RNC needs.
I hadn’t planned on doing open threads for the RNC like we did for the DNC, but with the Bush/Thompson/Lieberman tri-feckless tonight and the introduction of the Wasilla PTA’s National Security Czar tomorrow, loading up some open threads as a guffaw catchers is probably a good idea.
Dems:
56% Hillary Clinton
29% Barack Obama
8% John Edwards
Repubs:
32% Rudy Giuliani
29% John McCain
12% Mike Huckabee
7% Mitt Romney
6% Fred Thompson
3% Ron Paul
Quick thoughts: Unless Hillary stumbles horribly, she is unstoppable here (but I guess we all knew that). Obama’s only real play is to go for picking up as many delegates as he can. McCain probably got a good bounce out of New Hampshire in this poll, but if Giuliani doesn’t perform well in Florida, don’t be surprised if McCain pulls off an upset in New York. I’m kind of surprised Huckabee polled as well as he did and somewhat less surprised at how poorly Romney polled. And, hey, we don’t have enough nutjobs in NY to boost Ron Paul’s numbers? I figured he would have finished above Thompson at the very least.
MORE: I’m fairly certain about my Dem picks. I think Edwards is going to surprise again. If I had to do any flipping, I’d put Paul at #3 and Giuliani at #5 for the Repubs, but I think the Paulbearers are probably annoying the piss outta everyone in NH by now, so I don’t think they’ve converted as many indies as I would have predicted a week ago, and I still think, against my better judgment, that the New Hampshire folks are going to make Rudy pay for blowing them off, thus allowing the Thompzombies to squeak by.
UPDATE: Ugh. Nobody told me. I was wondering why The Late Slight Hope wasn’t on my TV screens today (and I couldn’t scrape Giuliani off of them). I’m gonna flip Giuliani to #5 and Thompson to #6 BUT DON’T TELL ANYONE.
Republican presidential candidates former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (front L) and U.S. Senator John McCain (front R) listen to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (front C) as he makes a point during the Fox News Presidential Forum at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire January 6, 2008. Actor and “Huckappendage” Chuck Norris (rear) pointed a semi-automatic weapon at Romney’s head for most of the forum.
Here’s a performance review of the five Republican participants in tonight’s Fox News Presidential Forum:
RUDOLPH GIULIANI: He started the evening off by tearing a Muslim baby in half with his bare hands, climbing up on the table and taking a dump on the Koran while his foreign policy expert Norman Podhoretz drew a pentagram on the studio floor using the child’s blood. Later Giulaini vigorously defended charges that New York was a sanctuary city during his tenure as mayor while he applied mascara and poured himself into a Vera Wang evening gown. He finished the evening by saying, “September 11th to me is the essence of why September 11th is and always will be September 11th and not anything else but September 11th, which occurred on September 11th and not on any other day but September 11th regardless of those people who want us to forget what happened on September 11th because it did happen on September 11th and that is why September 11th must be remembered for what it is ... September 11th. And to conclude, September 11th.”
FRED THOMPSON: He spent most of the evening consumed with the tasks of eating steaming bowls of cream of wheat and bottling his own farts, occasionally breaking in to utter things like, “Mandate mumble mumble ACLU mumble mumble border security mumble mumble islamofascism mumble mumble fart jar.” By the end of the forum he had curled up on the floor with his pants around his ankles and fallen fast asleep.
MIKE HUCKABEE: Following moderator Chris Wallace’s initial question regarding Huckabee referring to George Bush’s “arrogance and bunker mentality,” Huckabee pulled out his bass guitar and began playing Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4.” When Wallace protested Chuck Norris walked over to the moderator and punched him in the throat, causing the broadcast to be delayed for several minutes. Wallace’s toughest question directed at Huckabee for the rest of the forum was “What is your favorite ice cream flavor?” to which Huckabee replied, “Sanctity of life.”
MITT ROMNEY: Visibly shaken by having Chuck Norris point a semi-automatic weapon at his head during the entire forum, Romney just prattled on about sports for most of the evening, saying things like “If Willie Mays hadn’t stayed with the American Basketball Association after winning the Stanley Cup, Billie Jean King would have gone on to dominate the Cy Young Award. And, ummmm, pole vault.” At the end of the evening all of the candidates except for Thompson, who was asleep under the table, beat Romney to a bloody pulp just because they all think he’s a douchebag.
JOHN MCCAIN: Relishing his current front-runner status in the New Hampshire race, McCain just kept barking out the word “maverick” and spinning around in his chair during the beginning of the forum. At one point when Wallace asked him if he still stood behind the McCain-Feingold act, McCain grew agitated, ran out of the studio, headbutted a female production assistant and started wildly fucking a Coke machine. He then sprinted outside and tried to half-nelson a Prius for twenty minutes. After he gave up, he returned to the studio, poked his head in the door and yelped, “Maverick!”
I do think, Diane, that Fred Thompson had a terrific night. I mean, this is the Fred Thompson we used to see as an actor on television. He was confident. He was funny. He was well informed. The question is, is it too late to matter?
I’m being as objective as possible here; I even thought Guiliani had a pretty good night, but Fred Thompson? He was a mumbling bowl of ill-informed mush. A complete disaster. How did Stephanopolous come away from watching that debate thinking Thompson had a “terrific night”?
Over the weekend the beltway crowd has pushed forth the meme that there’s some kind of John McCain surge in the works, but I just ain’t buying it. First of all, poll-wise, there’s just no evidence of it, so all they seem to be running with are some recent newspaper endorsements he’s received (and, please, the endorsement of the sniveling “Independent Democrat” Joe Lieberman won’t help at all). Let’s take a look at what impact those newspaper endorsements will have according to Rasmussen:
Just 4% of Americans say an endorsement by their local newspaper will make them more likely to vote for a candidate. Thirteen percent (13%) say it will likely have the opposite impact.
McCain is dead in the water barring some weird confluence of extraordinary circumstances. I still think Romney’s going to be their guy. The Huckabubble will burst relatively soon and Mitt’s sitting on piles of cash. Thompson is a dud and Giuliani is covered in ooze.
MORE: I don’t see Ron Paul doing much in Iowa, but look for a surprise showing by him in New Hampshire. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict he’ll come in third behind Romney and McCain.
Regardless of how exceptional this pack of Democratic presidential nominees is supposed to be, I’ve had a hard time getting juiced up about any of the candidates. Early on I really dug Obama, but like so many other people, my initial intrigue has turned to mush. But thanks to Minneapolis Public Radio’s Select a Candidate quiz, I now know that my favorite is Chris Dodd. I can’t say I’m surprised as I’ve always been impressed with the guy, dating back to when I was a resident of the Nutmeg State. Being a realist, however, I know that he doesn’t stand a chance in hell of getting the nomination, so I think my second result, John Edwards, is probably who I’m going to side with. Policy-wise, I like a lot of his ideas and he seems to have buffed down the smarmy sheen that turned me off in ‘04 (I was a Wes Clark guy back then). He seems like he really cares about people (I have a pretty finely-tuned bullshit detector), has a low negativity rating with conservatives (which will help in the general election), and I like that he’s happily married to a strong, smart and wonderful gal.
Here are my top ten results from the quiz:
Chris Dodd
John Edwards
Hillary Clinton
Dennis Kucinich
Barack Obama
Bill Richardson
Mike Gravel
Joe Biden
Ron Paul
drum roll please ... Rudy Giuliani (gack)
And, unsurprisingly, my results were 0.0 for Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo & Fred Thompson.
Take the quiz and let me know what you came up with in the comments.
THOMPSON’S DRUGFORCE: Maybe the head of Fred Thomson’s “Airforce” can be his Ambassador to Afghanistan.
SANDRA’S HAVING HER BRAIN OUT: I wasn’t aware that the Soft Boys’ fun-as-shit debut album A Can of Bees, featuring Robyn Hitchcock, has been out-of-print for a few years, but Egg City Radio is graciously giving it away (scroll down). (Hint: delete the track “(I Want To Be An) Anglepoise Lamp” that isn’t marked “Live” and doesn’t have a track # ... it’s actually a repeat of “Ugly Nora.")
Okay, it’s bad enough that Fred Thompson picked Liz “My Dad Molded Me Out of Hell Tar” Cheney as one of the co-chairs of his presidential campaign (aka “National Campaign Leadership Team"), but he’s picked another co-chair who proves that The Late Slight Hope and his supporters can’t see much of anything past the garbage-strewn borders of Baseland.
At a Fred Thompson “rally” in Iowa a supporter shows his appreciation by repeatedly yawning (left) and a large stuffed animal is so disinterested that it decides to flip around and dry hump the chair that it’s sitting on.
Twenty-four minutes after he began speaking in a small restaurant the other day, Fred D. Thompson brought his remarks to a close with a nod of his head and an expression of thanks to Iowans for allowing him to “give my thoughts about some things.”
Then he stood face to face with a silent audience.
“Can I have a round of applause?” Mr. Thompson said, drawing a rustle of clapping and some laughter.
“Well, I had to drag that out of you,” he said.
Still, Mr. Thompson at times seems to be looking for his sea legs. In an interview with Kay Henderson of Radio Iowa on Wednesday, in talking about Iran, he referred to the “Soviet Union and China.” (Ms. Henderson, at the end of her blog post on the exchange, wrote: “No, I did not mistype. Thompson said Soviet Union rather than Russia.”)
I was admittedly slightly worried about a Thompson candidacy when news about his potential presidential run first surfaced, but now it looks like this dull-witted wingnut sloth couldn’t even beat a parking ticket ... or Mike Gravel.
And if you want a hoot (I couldn’t stop laughing), go check out The Fred Thompson Forum, which pretty much proves that Ron Paul supporters are the funniest (and oddest) backers working the intertubes during this primary season. My fave posters over there are “Ted Kaczynski” and “itsaDoocy.” Here are a few quick highlights:
Fred is an intellectual:
“I recently heard on Fox news that Thompson supports a curfew of 1 AM for all people living in areas that are reported as potential targets of terrorists. I’m not sure how I feel about this, I am scared shitless of the arabs.... but i like to go out drinking until 2 AM some nights. I guess sometimes you have to sacrifice certain things for patriotism though. What do u guys think? I’m still really up in the air on this one.”
itsaDoocy:
“1 Am is a small price to pay for Safety. Id much rather go to sleep at 1 Am then have to fight terrorists over here.”
-Fred once helped a woman give birth at 40000 feet on an airplane. Only it was a dog in his shed.
-Fred has never once played with a doll.
-Fred can sit so still on a couch you would think he was dead.
-Fred beat Chuck Norris in an Arm-wraslin match. Chuck was so upset by the loss he kicked Freds dog. Now that dog don’t hunt.
-Freds bones are coated in Adamantium.
-Fred was travelling accross the atlantic and had to take the worst crap in his life. He leaned his butt over board and dropped a duece so large that when it hit the sea floor is caused a catastophic earth quake. Thats how the Mariannas trench was formed.
-Fred is twice the man Guiliani is and half the man he used to be.
Just poke around and you’ll find plenty of twisted guffaws in there. I couldn’t find the post, but I loved the one that referred to “Giuliani shaking down penguins in Antarctica.” Now I have to decide who I’m going to sign up as. Please leave suggestions in the comments.
