"I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people."Thanks for putting in the effort... to the extent that you did. Now, nestle back into that comfy chair and enjoy the hijinks like the rest of us.
January 22, 2008
Fred Thompson: "Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for president of the United States."
Good-bye, Fred:
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Did you see the press pestering Jeri Thompson before the announcement? She told them to bug off and said "Listen, when Big Fred withdraws, I guarantee you will know it." Lorrie Morgan could not be reached for comment.
Ann!
Thanks for putting in the effort... to the extent that you did. Now, nestle back into that comfy chair and enjoy the hijinks like the rest of us.
I am *shocked*, shocked at your tone.
Do you know how many Fredheads are out there?
Well hell not in the real world but in the blogosphere.
What the hell is up with that anyways?
You know if the blogs were representative of the electorate thean he should have ran, err limped away with it.
By the way Romney was endorsed by Tancredo....
I wonder if he shouldn't pimp that some more.
Heh.
Too bad. He was by far the best candidate. Hard times are comin'.
Bill Clinton was also very memorable in his withdrawal. Of course he had to turn in a corkscrew motion due to certain physical peculiarities we need not revisit here.
Big Fred engages so rarely that Jeri is very sad when Big Fred withdraws.
At least he's put himself out of his own misery, and will leave with some scraps of dignity. Unlike a certain former mayor of New York.
Irony-
Tom Daschle is calling Bill Clinton-unpresidential..
By gawd he's attacking one of theirs and now suddenly he's unpresidential.
Nevermind all the smears overseas and the politics doesn't stop at the shores shenanigans that Clinton did...
Thanks for putting in the effort... to the extent that you did.
Well, if he's managed to knock Huckabee out of contention in South Carolina, as so many commentators are saying, I say he has done a good job!
But I wish he'd stayed in longer. The abominable cleric might still rise from his grave and claim enough Southern delegates to trouble us further in February. Thompson sticking around might have blunted that a bit.
Oh well.
RE: Doyle:
At least he's put himself out of his own misery, and will leave with some scraps of dignity. Unlike a certain former mayor of New York.
I dunno. I don't think going down to ignominious defeat is going to leave anywhere near as bad a stain on Giuliani's reputation as the bit of business where he took his nagging wife's phone calls in the middle of a speech. After all, lots of people go down to ignominious defeat. But most people recognise that when you're giving a speech, you put your phone in etiquette mode. Or give it to an aide.
It's OK for Clinton to be "unpresidential" during the war effort- that ain't a big deal- but during a Democrat primary!
The audacity!
Cell Phone Gate
By gawd hang him at the stake!
Nevermind that the murder rate in New York went from 2000 annually to 30.
Of course a lot of you youngins are too young to remember Mayor Dinkin's Big Bad Apple, and the media sure isn't going to help you.
alas.
By gawd hang him at the stake!
It's not a reason thing. It's a visceral "what kind of idiot is this?" thing. It's like the new Australian Prime Minister -- the guy who eats his own ear wax. On camera. Well, not that disgusting. But it's on the same "contravention of civilised norms" scale.
I don't think it was the cell phone thing as much as the Ghouliani aspect of his candidacy.
Maybe the (overblown as it turns out) security detail story took a bite out of him as well.
Of course a lot of you youngins are too young to remember Mayor Dinkin's Big Bad Apple
A lot of people forget that there was a national decrease in crime during the Giuliani years, and a lot of people didn't care the Giuliani's "secret sauce" was basically letting the NYPD do whatever they wanted to black people.
I hope Rudy doesn't withdraw before I get the chance to vote for him here in Florida. I think he may have a better chance than other Republicans I voted for in the past, like Phil Gramm and Steve Forbes.
Fall Tour Dates for Fred
9/1-9/4 , MN Xcel Energy Center
welp-
Huckabee is out of money and is not paying for commercials or air time in Florida.
Having been a resident of Key West and Destin, Florida-let me tell you somethin' you can't cover Florida like Iowa or New Hampshire. You have to go to the mattresses, erh airwaves.
This could get interesting.
I hope Rudy doesn't withdraw before I get the chance to vote for him here in Florida.
Don't worry. I mean - you'll get your chance. Go ahead and worry that it'll be another debacle.
I'm not worried about Rudy losing. What I'm worried about is Hillary getting the Dem nomination. That'll blow my chance to vote for Obama in the general.
What the hell is with The National Review-
Just how out of touch are these people?
This from Leeden at The Corner-
Ok, Rich, So You Didn't Like Fred [Michael Ledeen]
We knew that. But please spare us the psychobabble. No candidate in memory was put on the couch so much as Fred, and where did it get us?
Here is the damn answer.
Maybe I've been around the active duty military community too long but there's this damn thing called-
A Call to Duty Cripes for civilians I think they made a damn movie with illusions to that value.
Fred Thompson almost as soon as he could after 9/11 {remember that you hosers?}-
quit the bloody Senate almost as soon as he could.
Thank gawd Lamar Alexander stepped out of retirement.
And-these idiots the Republican Punditistia couldn't even bother to ask him Fred why he quit.
Instead they pooh poohed that concern and we were left to fill in the blank with whatever-maybe something worse-like
He quit the Senate after 9/11 to go to Hollywood.
Jeebus could the NRO pull their heads outta there asses save Goldberg and Lowry.
madawaskan:
If I grant yours is a fair point, then the question is:
What did Rudy Giuiliani do?
Left office to make more money. Just like Fred.
What did Mitt Romney do?
Left office to make more money. Just like Fred.
What did Mike Huckabee do?
Left office to make more money. Just like Fred.
What did John Edwards do?
Left office to make more money. Just like Fred.
So that leaves us with who?
John McCain, who continued to serve his nation and ran for reelection.
Hillary Clinton, who continued to serve her nation and ran for reelection.
Barack Obama, who stepped up to serve his nation and ran for election.
Looks like those are the choices left using that definition.
Hillary continued to serve herself and ran for reelection.
Rudy is Italian and thus has very oily skin. So when he withdraws he will slide right out like greased lighting. Sort of how he got out of his first marriage with his cousin. Allegedly.
Randy-
Nope.
Here is the difference entre Rudy and Fred.
Rudy came out here to Nevada at least four times to campaign during the re-election which btw mattered a hell of a lot to the military.
We were trying to win a two front war.
In fact that's how I knew Nevada was in trouble because Rudy and Cheney came out here so much it was painful.
Where the hell was Fred?
MIA.
Now McCain-my gawd don't get me started on that piker-that guy is still fighting attrition style warfare and prides himself on being unadaptable.
That ain't how you fight terrorism.
That guy provided invaluable cover for the Democrats to wage the war at home- against public opinion.
to me that's inexcusable-if he is rewarded with the Presidency for that-well....we can only hope that he is a one termer-and if it takes McCain to maintain the Judiciary and to prevent the Clintons from finishing their hatred for the military then that's the way it's gotta be.
I just don't see real results form McCain like what Rudy has done in New York.
I remember my dad a three war veteran, and survivor of the Battle of the Bulge being scared to death of New York and driving a 200 mile radius around it in the 70's.
I know people that grew up in New York before Rudy and they say that trash was piled up in the streets and that parts of New York looked like Beirut.
For some reason Republicans don't want to hear about that.
They don't want to hear about 9/11-they want the comfort of forgetting that.
To me McCain has an unpredictable, my way or the highway nature.
It ain't exactly The Art of Comprimise.
Tell you what I don't think he really has too many "my friends" in the Senate or real "my friends" in the media-and he might find that out when it is too late.
Too bad. He would have made a very good President, I think; probably the best of the current field, all things considered. Of course, if the convention is brokered he still might. :)
What did Mitt Romney do?
Left office to make more money. Just like Fred.
I'm pretty sure Romney had money coming out of his ears well before he sought public office. I thought his prime businessman days came before his governorship.
What did Mike Huckabee do?
Left office to make more money. Just like Fred.
On the flip side, I would not be surprised to find that Huckabee made more money in office than out of it. Corruption and shady gift-taking are part of the rap against him, after all.
Madawaskan - I've heard the same things that you have about McCain (and often enough to figure most are true). Giuliani has to win Florida, though, or McCain will be the last man standing after the convention. Then what will you do?
FWIW, I agree with Revenant that Thompson probably was the best of the lot. His dithering over the summer left the door wide open for Huckabee, however. But that's politics.
While I think Giuliani did a marvelous job as mayor on the whole, his campaign has been a bigger mess than Thompson's, reflects poorly on his organizational skills, and he hasn't developed any message about where he wants to go if elected. Some of his foreign policy advisers are truly frightening. His defense of Kerick when he should have and probably did know the facts long before Kerick's indictment is troubling. While there are many aspects of his record as mayor to admire, working well with others was infamously not one of them. (Just my opinion, of course. YMMV ;-)
It was pretty much inevitable after his finish in SC, but it's still too bad. Fred was the most outwardly conservative candidate of the major nominees.
That said, his deliberate style and pattern of speech isn't well-suited to 1-minute debate responses, so it's probably for the best. (In a head-to-head debate, I daresay Hillary would get out twice as many words in the same timeframe.) He also did a downright lousy job of selling himself to the public; I can only assume that money played as big a role in that as the Senator's campaign strategy.
Now if only Ron Paul would take the hint...
Possibly true, Balfegor, but I was on a roll ;-) Romney pretty obviously left office to run for POTUS. I'm not so sure about Huckabee - seems a pretty straight shooter in that regard. If you can't trust a Baptist preacher to keep his hands out of the till who can you trust? (Don't bother answering that question - as I had to ask it I guess I know the answer.)
Who says there will be elections anyway?
Well, I guess I now have to vote for Romney in the Primary in the hopes that McCain and Huckabee will never ever ever become the candidate.
However, in the actual election I will write in Fred Thompson. My vote doesn't count anyway in California. Might as well go with the guy I really want.
At this point, I don't think it matters who is the next President. They are all cut from the same cheap sleazy piece of cloth and are getting ready to royally screw up the country.....in the name of progressivism, of course.
Well, Dusty, Bush royally screwed up the whole world in the name of neoconservatism. My idea of progressivism is to tax the wealthy to pay for the mess that George created. Who would you like to pay for it - the janitor?
JFK never withdrew. He just lay there and expected them to climb on and off. Like parrell bars. Or the pommel horse. In fact his last serious dalliance before he went to Dallas was Polina Astakhova the Russian gold medal winner in the uneven bars. Man that crazy russki could swing baby.
And she always nailed the landing of her dismount.
When Ed Muskie had to withdraw he cried like a little bitch. Not as bad as Terrell Owens though.
The timing was wonderful. I wrote a post this lunchtime saying that for anyone to get out of the race now while still financially viable was ludicrous, and within an hour I get an email alert that Thompson was getting out of the race. I'm inclined to stick with what I said: absent real financial problems, i.e. more significant than McCain's or Huckabee's, to get out when we're two weeks away from a day of primaries where there are four times more delegates in play than the total number awarded thusfar is nuts. Silly Fred. He got in too late and now he's leaving too early.
If John Edwards has to withdraw, not a hair will be out of place. Of course he is going to sue. About what we don't know. But we know he is going to sue.
Simon,
I suspect he decided he would rather spend the time with his mother, who is reported to be seriously ill.
Hillary is the only candidate who can't withdraw. She can just deny.
Trumpit said:
My idea of progressivism is to tax the wealthy to pay for the mess that George created. Who would you like to pay for it - the janitor?
Same song. Ho Hum. Blah blah blah.
Bush royally screwed up the whole world in the name of neoconservatism. My idea of progressivism is to tax the wealthy to pay for the mess that George created.
The funny thing is that if I said "progressives want to 'fix' the whole world and get 'the wealthy' to pay for it", I would be accused of attacking a straw man. :)
Goodbye Fred, the Republicans really are the stupid party.
At best we'll get Mr. Plastic, at worst Captain McQueeg. In either case, victory is doubtful.
hold it! stop the presses! this was the GOP frontrunner before he said he was running. NOOOOO.
In all fairness, he was never the front-runner in any poll, was he?
Lots of luck if you are for Rudy.
He's even twelve points down at home, in New York:
story here.
Even if he wins Florida and that gives him enough of a boost to eke out a win in New York, a candidate who has to fight for his home state is in serious trouble.
But we know he is going to sue.
I heard she had a different name.
- at least he didn't fall asleep while attending a Martin L King event, or did he? Adios Fred! You will mold with dignity
Agree with Simon--either Fred is really stupid to withdraw before the super primaries; or he didnt want the job in the first place. Certainly a strange election season.
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