When you are a lobbyist for 20 years, it is easy to mingle with from low places:
Republican presidential candidate Fred D. Thompsonhas been crisscrossing the country since early this summer on a privatejet lent to him by a businessman and close adviser who has a criminalrecord for drug dealing.
Thompson selected the businessman, Philip Martin, to raise seed money for his White Housebid. Martin is one of four campaign co-chairmen and the head of a groupcalled the "first day founders." Campaign aides jokingly began to referto Martin, who has been friends with Thompson since the early 1990s, asthe head of "Thompson's Airforce."
So who is Philip Martin?
Martin entered a plea of guilty to the sale of 11 pounds of marijuanain 1979; the court withheld judgment pending completion of hisprobation. He was charged in 1983 with violating his probation and withmultiple counts of felony bookmaking, cocaine trafficking andconspiracy. He pleaded no contest to the cocaine-trafficking andconspiracy charges, which stemmed from a plan to sell $30,000 worth ofthe drug, and was continued on probation.
The campaign says Fred Thompson has been friends with Martin since the mid-90s.
Late this week, in an , Mitt Romney attempted to educate Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson what this presidential race is all about, and how to get votes. To Romney, it's all about money:
"I think you're going to have to see what level of ground supportthat they have and what level of fundraising they have," Romney said inan interview with The Associated Press. "If Huckabee raises $20 millionthis quarter, like we did in the (first) quarter, then he'll become afront-tier candidate."
"And I think from Thompson's standpoint, Ithink he certainly has to look at $20 million as sort of the — this is,if you will, the low hanging-fruit quarter for him," Romney said,adding that it's easier to raise money in the first weeks of a racewhen friends, family and allies are tapped.
And Romney should know. After all, he to help him win the Iowa straw poll last month. Money, money, money.
Fred Thompson, who is his intention to run for president, is an ardent supporter of guilty Cheney official Scooter Libby. Earlier this month, Thompson wrote a for a conservative blog that attacked both Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the judge for being too tough on Libby:
Proving once again that Fitzgerald can get away with practicallyanything in Washington, the judge apparently accepted Fitzgerald’sargument, contrary to all notions of basic fairness. The judge rejected his ownprobation office’s recommendation, not only doubling the 15-monthminimum to 30 months, but also fining Mr. Libby $250,000 and giving him400 hours of public service.
...Official behavior, with regard to matters like the ScooterLibby case, are not what our framers had in mind. Now this excessivesentence, given by the Federal District Judge is just another in a longline of reasons why Mr. Libby should be pardoned.
Of course, there was more to it than just the judge and the prosecutor. The jury unanimously found Libby guilty on . That is how our justice system is supposed to work.
Fred Thompson likes to paint himself as a Washington-outsider. Still, that did not stop him from for Scooter Libby's .
Thompson is part of the establishment. He served as a for twenty years:
As a lobbyist for more than 20 years, billion-dollar corporationspaid Thompson for his access to members of Congress and White Housestaff. During that time he was close to two Senate majority leaders,both from his home state of Tennessee - his political mentor HowardBaker and, more recently, his former colleague Bill Frist.
DuringBaker's tenure, Thompson lobbied for a savings-and-loan deregulationbill that helped hasten the industry's collapse and a failed nuclearenergy project that cost taxpayers more than a billion dollars.
Morerecently, while Frist led the Senate, Thompson earned more than$750,000 lobbying for a British reinsurance company that wanted tolimit its liability from asbestos lawsuits.
So much for having clean hands. This guy would do nothing to fix Washington.
Immediately after New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg officially announced his defection from the GOP ranks, political analysts quickly began a possible general election match-up between three New Yorkers: Giuliani, Clinton and Bloomberg. Already, the media is in love with the idea of a three-candidate New York showdown in '08.
Prematurely though, these pundits are assuming that Clinton and Giuliani will win their party's nominations. We are six long months away from the first vote. Anything can happen on both the Democratic and GOP ends. Giuliani's pro-choice stances could be his undoing. Hillary's Washington establishment label could cause a massive voter revolt in January. We cannot presume anything at this point.
So while other blogs, news sites and so-called 'pundits' salivate over a possible showdown, Newsweek's thought outside the box about Bloomberg's possible impact on all the other candidates:
Other candidates could also feel the Bloomberg effect in a generalelection fight. John Edwards has made a strong pitch for his party'spopulist wing. Should he win the Democratic nomination, pro-businessvoters in the middle might view a Bloomberg vote as a protest againstboth Bush-backing Republicans and Labor-pandering Dems. Barack Obama'scampaign is centered around the idea he would introduce a new,different kind of politics. Whatever you may think of it, Bloomberg'scandidacy would certainly be new and different. On the right, MittRomney has taken conservative positions on every major social issue inthe hopes he will emerge as the choice of Christian conservatives inthe primary. Should he win the nomination, he's counting on moderatevoters remembering he was the governor of liberal Massachusetts forfour years. But that pivot could prove harder with a viable, sociallymoderate Independent candidate in the race. John McCain and FredThompson's aides talk up their candidates' appeal to a broad swath ofvoters as evidence they can lead the GOP out of troubled times. Butthat appeal may well be limited as long as McCain and Thompson refuseto break with Bush on the unpopular war in Iraq.
This is a pretty decent analysis. Mitt Romney is expected to perform yet another political makeover if he becomes the GOP nominee -- transforming himself back into the moderate candidate he was as Massachusetts Governor. Many of Romney's moderate positions on social issues will be canceled out by Michael Bloomberg. There would be too much overlap. For that reason, if Romney and Bloomberg were two of the three candidates in the general election, almost any Democrat would win.
But I don't think it will come to that. The Karl Rove's strategy of pandering to the far-right works well. That is why someone like Fred Thompson or Mike Huckabee, two conservative southerners that are good at reaching out to Evangelical conservatives, would be affected the least if Bloomberg got into the race.
Obviously, these hypotheticals are nothing more than late-night thought unless Bloomberg actually does run. But if he chooses to, Bloomberg would be much more electable than Ross Perot. It would be unlike any other election in American history.
Happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there. We're lite on posts today, but we'll be back up to full speed at midnight eastern tonight with the nightowl clips.
Meanwhile, new are in from South Carolina, which are great news for Obama and Thompson. Obama, within the last month, has vaulted ahead of Clinton. Here are the numbers. First, the Democrats:
South Carolina Democrats Barack Obama - 35% Hillary Clinton - 24% John Edwards - 12% Joe Biden - 2% Undecided - 24%
Now to the Republicans. Thompson, who is scheduled to announce his run for the White House in July, leads Giuliani, Romney and McCain:
South Carolina Republicans Fred Thompson - 25% Rudolph Giuliani - 21% Mitt Romney - 11% John McCain - 7% Mike Huckabee - 5% Undecided - 28%
Maybe it's not some coincidence that the two candidates on top, Obama and Thompson, are thought of as Washington-outsiders. People on both sides of the spectrum are sick of business as usual in Washington and want change.
This comes from the Senate Majority Leader, who spoke at the Center for American Progress today. When asked about 2008, he about the interesting variety of candidates in the Republican presidential field:
I’ve learned one thing in listening to all the debates and readingabout all these people running for office, and the one fact I’velearned, I can’t get out of my mind, is that Rudy Giuliani has beenmarried more times than Mitt Romney’s been hunting. …â€
And his point is not off-base. One in three Republican voters are with the list of Republican candidates already in the race. The remedy? In marches Fred Thompson. According to a new AP/Ipsos poll, are leaning in his direction, even though the former Tennessee Senator has yet to officially announce his presidential bid. And maybe most important, Fred Thompson has more than any GOP candidate other than Ron Paul.
Forget Rudy McRomney. Once Thompson officially gets in, he will be the GOP front-runner.
is reporting that Fred Thompson, former senator and current star on the show Law & Order, will run for president. His presidential exploratory committee will be formed next week. A formal announcement is tentatively scheduled for July 5th. But almost immediately, he will start campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire:
Thompson's formal announcement is planned for Nashville. It'stentatively set for July 5, although it could come earlier. Organizerssay the red pickup truck that was a hallmark of Thompson's first Senate race will begin showing up in Iowa and New Hampshire as an emblem of what they consider his folksy, populist appeal.
A member of Thompson's inner circle, who insisted on anonymity becausehe is not a spokesman, said the campaign's message will be: "Thepublic is increasingly cynical and disenchanted with government. Theyneed to have a sense that competence will return to government, thatgovernment can do the things they care the most about. They want areason to continue Republican governance. We want Thompson to be seenas the adult with a firm hand on the tiller -- the safe option for theaverage primary voter."
The adult? Is this the same adult that Michael Moore to "think about" visiting a "mental institution?" Or how about the adult that said MoveOn.org and Harry Reid had "" on Iraq? Not even George W. Bush was this rhetorically off-the-wall before he became president.
For a minute, let's take a much-needed intermission from the specificity of the daily political grind and just zoom out a little. Think about the era we now live in. American Idol, Survivor, Dancing with the Stars -- all of those television shows are popular because average Joe's like ourselves get to choose the outcome of something big. More than ever, we are a society obsessed with personalizing everything that is relevant in our lives. We like choice. Just the thought of inevitability bores us.
If this societal trend continues down its present course, then the desire to personalize our world will definitely play a role in shaping the 2008 presidential race. In other words, why just 'vote' for your favorite candidate when you can 'create' your favorite candidate?
It is quite possible that all of the candidates currently running have already lost. None of them -- with the exception of maybe Barack Obama -- was drafted to run. These egotistical presidential hopefuls anointed themselves. Not only that, but in deciding to run, they pretty much concluded that they were more qualified than 300,000,000 other Americans to hold the highest office. Doesn't that come across as condescending? It would not be surprising if the eventual Republican and Democratic nominees were individuals that, as of this date, have yet to announce their intentions to run.
A few years back, many people despised politicians because of their connections to wealth. Today, we despise politicians because so many of them lack both humility and authenticity. By lacking authenticity, it looks as if they have something to hide. Voters would probably respect someone for having reservationsabout running. Translation: if you think that you are the best, you probably are not.
Al Gore, Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson are still mulling over the possibility of running, but have expressed some doubt. If by September the voting blocks in either party are bored with the candidates that already anointed themselves months earlier, then these candidates could be drafted into the race. In the general election, if it was Al Gore vs Fred Thompson or Al Gore vs Newt Gingrich, 2008 would be the most pro-populist presidential contest in history. It would also be yet another reminder of the time we now live in.
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