Sean Hackbarth may need to borrow your couch

by folkbum

It's Politico, so, you know, take it for what it's worth:

Several Republican officials close to Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign said they expect the candidate will drop out of the race within days if he finishes poorly in Thursday’s Iowa caucus. [. . .]

A Thompson campaign source said there is “a strong likelihood” that if Thompson comes in a distant third in Iowa, with less than 15 percent of the vote, he would drop out soon—most likely before this weekend’s New Hampshire presidential debates.

When Sean Hackbarth comes back from DC next week, he may need a place to crash. Hope someone can hook him up . . .

Random Question

by folkbum

















Why is it that conservative bloggers and commentators find the woman on the left hideously ugly, but think the guy on the right is so incredibly handsome?

Two Related Updates on My Thompson Post

One, Glenn Greenwald's been tracking the way conservatives are now desperately backpedalling over Bush, perhaps to let the candidates like Thompson run to Bush's right:

This fraud is as transparent as it is dishonest, yet there are signs that the media is nonetheless beginning to adopt this theme that there is some sort of epic and long-standing "Bush-conservative schism." But very little effort is required to see what a fraud that storyline is.

One of the few propositions on which Bush supporters and critics agree is that George Bush does not change and has not changed at all over the last six years. He is exactly the same.

And none of the supposed grounds for conservative discontent -- especially Bush's immigration position -- is even remotely new. Bush's immigration views have been well-known since before he was first elected in 2000, yet conservatives have devoted to him virtually cult-like loyalty and support. Just logically speaking, Bush's immigration views cannot be the cause of the flamboyant conservative "rebellion" against Bush since those views long co-existed with intense conservative devotion to Bush.

There is really only one thing that has changed about George W. Bush from the 2002-2004 era when conservatives hailed him as the Great Conservative Leader, and now. Whereas Bush was a wildly popular leader then, which made conservatives eager to claim him as their Standard-Bearer, he is now one of the most despised presidents in U.S. history, and conservatives are thus desperate to disassociate themselves from the President for whom they are solely responsible. It is painfully obvious there is nothing noble, substantive or principled driving this right-wing outburst; it is a pure act of self-preservation.

An excerpt does not do it justice. The facts in this case are merciless. Please read the whole thing.

Two, Dad29 kicked off the comments thread to that Fred Thompson post with this:

The main reason is that Thompson, just like Obama, sees the political situation as one which is deteriorating rapidly into a "tit/tat" partisan steaming pile of crap.

I pulled it out because I think it--and (humbly speaking) my response--deserves a little bit more light.

Dad29 seems to think Thompson is above partisanship. I suppose there are two possible readings of that sentence. The first is that Fred is someone who engages his opponents and finds common ground to move the country forward. This does not describe Fred Thompson: As I noted in response, Fred's talking the fringe talk (despite his history) on immigration, the Iraq war, health care, gay rights, and more. He doesn't seem inclined to move to the center on any of them.

A second reading, which, for all I know, is what Dad29 meant, is that Fred doesn't deign to engage the debate, talk to anyone who disagrees with him, bother with compromise. After all, Thompson's most significant campaign move to date is making a YouTube video where he tells Michael Moore to go check into an insane asylum unstead of engaging the filmmaker over the challenges of the US health care system.

And the conservatives ate that up. In part, I bet, because the rightroots hate Michael Moore. And in part because they love that mine-is-bigger-than-yours-ism (for Fred, a cigar is not just a cigar), that I-can't-hear-you-ism, that stay-the-course-in-the-face-of-disaster-ism.

That's why it's ironic that the conservative chattering classes are turning on Bush and turned on by Thompson: If the latter paraphrase of Dad29's statement is the more accurate one, Fred Thompson is George W. Bush.

And that, my friends and neighbors, is a scary, scary prospect.

"I'm not a folksy tough guy, but I play one on TV"

by folkbum

I'm not following the Democratic primary all that closely, because, frankly, I think I will be happy to support any of the top three or five candidates as they stand right now. There are things I like more or less about each candidate, but on balance, they are people I can get behind and who, I think, are eminently electable. (And adding: My February 19th vote here in Wisconsin is essentially worthless.)

The Republican primary, on the other hand--now that's where the show is. It's fascinating not for who will necessarily come out on top, but rather because it offers a good window into the messy apartment that is the Republican base.

This whole Fred Thompson phenomenon is a good example of it. While it's true that some Democrats keep holding out for Clark to get in the race (there is, for example, a near-daily "My Wesley will come for me!" diary at dKos), and many pollsters are still including Al Gore in their polls, I think the Dem field is set. And we like our candidates.

But for Republicans, something was missing. As much as their top-tier candidates have tried to out-Jack-Bauer each other, all of them had some fatal flaw: Giuliani wasn't pro-life enough, McCain wasn't anti-immigration enough, Romney wasn't Christian enough. So enter Fred Thompson who, in fact, seems to have all three of those flaws (abortion, immigration, religion). But, you know, he was the one everyone demanded.

And I can't, for the life of me, understand why. (Well, I can, but I need a minute to get there.) Aside from one term in the US Senate, Thompson has had three careers: attorney, lobbyist, and Hollywood actor. These are not occupations that necessarily win praise from conservatives. Thompson is reputed to be "folksy," but it's just the accent, I think, since he certainly hasn't shown himself to be anything like you or me--whether it's renting a pick-up truck as a prop while driving a luxury sedan or sleeping through the starlets in search of a trophy wife. "Folksy" is a character he plays on TV, not who he is.

Ben Brothers imagines what would happen if Thompson were a Democrat, and concludes that a Dem-equivalent Draft Thompson movement would show us in utter disarray. But that kind of hypocrisy is par for the course. The "pick-up truck" link above takes you to a Jamison Foser essay at Media Matters where he notes that John Edwards gets reamed for being Edwards:

The rich trial lawyer/lobbyist who rents a red pickup, not to drive, but to use as a prop? The media tell us he's folksy and authentic. And the rich former trial lawyer who doesn't hide his good fortune? He's a phony.

More important, though is what Glenn Greenwald points out:

This folksy, down-home, regular guy has spent his entire adult life as a lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, except when he was an actor in Hollywood.

And -- like the vast, vast majority of Republican "tough guys" who play-act the role so arousingly for our media stars, from Rudy Giuliani to Newt Gingrich -- Thompson has no military service despite having been of prime fighting age during the Vietnam War (Thompson turned 20 in 1962, Gingrich in 1963, Giuliani in 1964). He was active in Republican politics as early as the mid-1960s, which means he almost certainly supported the war in which he did not fight. [. . .]

The only thing that makes Thompson a "tough guy" is that he pretends to be one; he play-acts as one. There is nothing real about it. But in the same way that George Bush's ranch and fighter pilot costumes (along with his war advocacy) sent media stars swooning over his masculinity and "toughness," [. . .] the Bush followers in need of a new authoritarian Leader[] are so intensely hungry for this faux masculine power that the illusion, the absurd play-acting, is infinitely more valuable to them than any reality, than any genuine attributes of "toughness."

In other words, the Republicans see Thompson as the only one who can provide real strength, real leadership. And it's entirely because he does that on TV.

I said before, the other candidates were trying to out-Jack-Bauer each other (Romney, for example, wants to double the size of Guantanamo Bay). But Thompson's already played that kind of role. Heck, he's already been president. On TV. The Republicans want to elect a fictional man to be our President.
*****I have another theory about what's going on with the Republican primary, and I think it fits in with the Thompson angle. I've been wondering if Bush isn't actively trying to upset the base right now. Digby caught an MSNBC chyron that read, "Just how liberal is President Bush?" The right answer, of course, is "not at all." But on immigration, and, last week, global warming, Bush seems to be offering positions further away from the far right and closer to--though not really near--the center.

I can't help but think that Bush is trying to give the current candidates the opening they need to run against him and his 28% support--by running to Bush's right. To those of us who actually are liberals, this is both amusing and a disturbing continuation of the tendency of the right to define the center as the left, and views held by majorities as fringe.

There is, of course, one issue for which Bush is not leaving openings to his right: Iraq. And ten of the now-eleven candidates have done nothing but pledge to keep up what Bush has begun there, including Fred Thompson. Some, like our own Tommy!, talk around the issue in different language, but Ron Paul seems to be the only one who assesses Iraq with any kind of rational basis in reality. In fact, one question I've had about Fred Thompson is which side of what I would call the Ron Paul Line he falls. We know Thompson's answer about what he would do differently in Iraq (which is nothing). But does Thompson have anything like a more realistic picture of the world and why we are in the situation we're in than do his counterparts? I don't know.

Regardless, the White House seems to be playing a strategy that allows all the candidates, including Thompson, a chance to run against Bush. Indeed, Thompson is even now wowing audiences and xenophobic bloggers with his tough-guy, anti-Bush immigration talk.

However, if 2006 is any guide, this is a losing strategy. Conservatives like to think that they lost in 2006 because they abandoned core conservative values, but they did not (kudos to Michael King on this excellent essay yesterday). The hard-right base voted for Republicans as they usually do; moderates [corrected spelling] did not. I think there's a reason that, despite his flaws, Rudy Giuliani is still winning the Republican primary polls. It's not because, as some pundits point out, Rudy looked tough on 9/11. It's because Rudy's not a hard-right conservative.

Rudy's moderateness will not help him win the primary in the end, as any primary favors candidates who play to the base. But as pollsters ask Republicans in general whom they could vote for, Giuliani is the one who appeals to them the most. I imagine that if Rudy were to cross to the Ron Paul side of the Ron Paul Line, he could walk away with the general election. But because the Republican base is looking for someone to Bush's right, but who still conveys the same image of a though-guy commander in chief, a candidate like Fred Thompson--or, rather, the candidate he plays on TV--will win the primary.

photo by Greg at The Talent Show