The Gremlins Of McLean, Virginia

It's not just the elves who have broken into Fred Thompson's website and turned it into an exploratory committee website.

Check out his biographical sketch. To those who are familiar with Thompson's career and record, some of the rougher edges have been scrubbed away. (It's common: you wouldn't expect Hillary Clinton to brag about her service for the Rose law firm or Rudy Giuliani to recall his bachelor-bunker-ship with a gay couple.)

To wit: Thompson "retired with a 100% pro-life voting record." The arbiter of such things, the National Light To Life committee, gave Thompson a rating of 87% for his service in the 105th Congress, 78% for his service in the 106th, and 33 percent for his service in the 107th. (Search for yourself.) The caveat here is that two of the three NRLC scored votes were about campaign finance reform, and Thompson did vote the correct way on the one piece of legislation dealing with abortion on military reservations.

Thompson also brags about the campaign finance hearings he convened in 1996 to investigate. Actually, let's go back to National Right to Life. Thompson subpoenaed reams of internal documents. They were not happy. Republicans at the time did not judge Thompson's committee a success, and, in fact, when interviewing Republicans who knew Thompson in the Senate, his inability to expose Clintonian wrongdoing is one of their chief complaints (aside from the integral role he played in writing and advocating for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation.)

Thompson's bio:

Thompson would return to Tennessee, where he maintained law offices in Nashville and Washington. His practice varied from pro bono work to representing the state of Tennessee and large corporations, such as Westinghouse.

True. He was a well respected trial lawyer.

Thompson's bio:

...

Well, that's where he omits to mention that he served as a federal lobbyist.

Comments

hey Fredo, you can run but you can't hide. If you are a real man then accept the fact that you are:

* a foreign and domestic lobbyist who has earned millions lobbying

* a trial lawyer

* a do-nothing senator without any major legislations

* a lazy politician

Oh, did anyone mention that his trophy wife who is more than 22 years younger than him controls his campaign.

Posted by Mikey | August 8, 2007 8:53 AM

"(It's common: you wouldn't expect Hillary Clinton to brag about her service for the Rose law firm or Rudy Giuliani to recall his bachelor-bunker-ship with a gay couple.)"

So your point would be??????

Posted by jbr | August 8, 2007 9:01 AM

Freddie's a pipe dream. Hillary will likely have women locked down to vote for her--Thompson with his trophy wife will remind a lot of women of the secretary that their husband nailed and ran off with. (Sorry to end that sentence with two prepositions).

One other thing. Republicans used to (and still do) say that John Edwards won't be President because people don't like trial lawyers. That is true--people don't much care for lawyers in general. It says something about Thompson's campaign that he so prominently mentions his lawyerin' in his bio. Maybe because he also held the one job that Americans of all ideological stripes hate way more than lawyers...

Posted by Lef | August 8, 2007 6:06 PM