Fred on Fidel and Frank Cagle gives us a glimpse of Senator Thompson
He's not even in it, but he sounds like it. The only drawback for him right now is that he won't be participating in the debate tonight amongst GOP candidates at the Reagan Library tonight 8 p.m. EDT.
HT: Glenn Reynolds
From PJM:
You might have read the stories about filmmaker Michael Moore taking ailing workers from Ground Zero in Manhattan to Cuba for free medical treatments. According to reports, he filmed the trip for a new movie that bashes America for not having government-provided health care.Now, I have no expectation that Moore is going to tell the truth about Cuba or health care. I defend his right to do what he does, but Moore’s talent for clever falsehoods has been too well documented. Simply calling his movies documentaries rather than works of fiction, I think, may be the biggest fiction of all.
While this PR stunt has obviously been successful — here I am talking about it — Moore’s a piker compared to Fidel Castro and his regime. Moore just parrots the story they created — one of the most successful public relations coups in history. This is the story of free, high quality Cuban health care.
The truth is that Cuban medical care has never recovered from Castro’s takeover — when the country’s health care ranked among the world’s best. He won the support of the Cuban people by promising to replace Batista’s dictatorship with free elections, and to end corruption. Once in power, though, he made himself dictator and instituted Soviet-style Communism. Cubans not only failed to regain their democratic rights, their economy plunged into centrally planned poverty.
Fred's not going to let the weenies like Michael Moore, Harry Belafonte, Steven Spielberg, or George Clooney spin the disaster that is Cuba. He knows that Fidel's Communism has destroyed a once beautiful island nation, and that the people have been repressed in ways that would only make Lenin's and Stalin's heart go pitter-patter. Read the whole thing. It's well worth the couple of minutes to digest his points.
Meanwhile, Frank Cagle has a superb profile of Fred Thompson that is also a must read. Here's a snippet:
The myth has arisen that Thompson has never had a hard political race. At the beginning of the 1994 Senate campaign he was down 20 points to Cooper, and East Tennessee conservatives were just not that impressed. Tennessee had had two Democratic senators in Al Gore and Jim Sasser; it appeared that would not change. What people remember at the end of the campaign is that Thompson led the ticket, won with 61 percent of the vote. The TCU endorsed him. Moxley would go on to join his Senate staff. We would all become solid Thompson supporters. But it didn't happen overnight.
Over the fall and winter I was to see Thompson often at various Lincoln Day Dinners in the surrounding counties. These annual party fundraisers get good attendance in a gubernatorial election year—you could sense 1994 would be a good year for Republicans and they were excited about it. At the first of these events it was obvious the crowds were there to see Sundquist, the party's hope to regain the governor's office and control of patronage. They would usually seat Thompson down on the end of the dais, and he usually got to speak last. Sundquist and the local congressman would get first dibs. His speeches were OK, but not spellbinding. They tended to be a little too abstract, too much from his background as a Senate staffer, a federal prosecutor and an attorney. But he got better as he went along. His problem was his attitude. He generally looked miserable and had the air of a man who wondered why he was there.
After the Knox County event at which Newt Gingrich had fired up the crowd with his Contract with America, Thompson and some of the locals repaired to the hotel bar to get something to drink that would kill the taste of rubber chicken . It was obvious Thompson was uncomfortable in his new role. He couldn't find his rhythm. He had been watching Sundquist and Quillen and Congressman Jimmy Duncan, who had had years of party banquets behind them and could deliver a banal homily at the drop of a hat. It just wasn't Thompson's style.
Thompson had entered the race as a conventional candidate, doing what conventional candidates do, and he hated it. He also wasn't making any progress in catching Cooper.
Somewhere in the course of the conversation Thompson became “Fred” and it got down to candid talk. Someone at the table offered the opinion that people didn't really want those long-winded answers. They just wanted to know one thing: “Are you one of us, or are you one of them?” Thompson threw back his head and laughed at that.
If Fred jumps in, this will probably bare little resemblance to a conventional campaign. He doesn't like running that sort of a campaign. He chucked all that away in '94, and ran as himself, and it endeared him to voters. They understood him, where he stood, what he meant, and what he planned to do in DC.
In an age where politicos say what they think people want to hear, Fred could turn those tabels, and say what he KNOWS the people want to hear. Even better, he knows he can get it done.
Publius II
HT: Glenn Reynolds
From PJM:
You might have read the stories about filmmaker Michael Moore taking ailing workers from Ground Zero in Manhattan to Cuba for free medical treatments. According to reports, he filmed the trip for a new movie that bashes America for not having government-provided health care.Now, I have no expectation that Moore is going to tell the truth about Cuba or health care. I defend his right to do what he does, but Moore’s talent for clever falsehoods has been too well documented. Simply calling his movies documentaries rather than works of fiction, I think, may be the biggest fiction of all.
While this PR stunt has obviously been successful — here I am talking about it — Moore’s a piker compared to Fidel Castro and his regime. Moore just parrots the story they created — one of the most successful public relations coups in history. This is the story of free, high quality Cuban health care.
The truth is that Cuban medical care has never recovered from Castro’s takeover — when the country’s health care ranked among the world’s best. He won the support of the Cuban people by promising to replace Batista’s dictatorship with free elections, and to end corruption. Once in power, though, he made himself dictator and instituted Soviet-style Communism. Cubans not only failed to regain their democratic rights, their economy plunged into centrally planned poverty.
Fred's not going to let the weenies like Michael Moore, Harry Belafonte, Steven Spielberg, or George Clooney spin the disaster that is Cuba. He knows that Fidel's Communism has destroyed a once beautiful island nation, and that the people have been repressed in ways that would only make Lenin's and Stalin's heart go pitter-patter. Read the whole thing. It's well worth the couple of minutes to digest his points.
Meanwhile, Frank Cagle has a superb profile of Fred Thompson that is also a must read. Here's a snippet:
The myth has arisen that Thompson has never had a hard political race. At the beginning of the 1994 Senate campaign he was down 20 points to Cooper, and East Tennessee conservatives were just not that impressed. Tennessee had had two Democratic senators in Al Gore and Jim Sasser; it appeared that would not change. What people remember at the end of the campaign is that Thompson led the ticket, won with 61 percent of the vote. The TCU endorsed him. Moxley would go on to join his Senate staff. We would all become solid Thompson supporters. But it didn't happen overnight.
Over the fall and winter I was to see Thompson often at various Lincoln Day Dinners in the surrounding counties. These annual party fundraisers get good attendance in a gubernatorial election year—you could sense 1994 would be a good year for Republicans and they were excited about it. At the first of these events it was obvious the crowds were there to see Sundquist, the party's hope to regain the governor's office and control of patronage. They would usually seat Thompson down on the end of the dais, and he usually got to speak last. Sundquist and the local congressman would get first dibs. His speeches were OK, but not spellbinding. They tended to be a little too abstract, too much from his background as a Senate staffer, a federal prosecutor and an attorney. But he got better as he went along. His problem was his attitude. He generally looked miserable and had the air of a man who wondered why he was there.
After the Knox County event at which Newt Gingrich had fired up the crowd with his Contract with America, Thompson and some of the locals repaired to the hotel bar to get something to drink that would kill the taste of rubber chicken . It was obvious Thompson was uncomfortable in his new role. He couldn't find his rhythm. He had been watching Sundquist and Quillen and Congressman Jimmy Duncan, who had had years of party banquets behind them and could deliver a banal homily at the drop of a hat. It just wasn't Thompson's style.
Thompson had entered the race as a conventional candidate, doing what conventional candidates do, and he hated it. He also wasn't making any progress in catching Cooper.
Somewhere in the course of the conversation Thompson became “Fred” and it got down to candid talk. Someone at the table offered the opinion that people didn't really want those long-winded answers. They just wanted to know one thing: “Are you one of us, or are you one of them?” Thompson threw back his head and laughed at that.
If Fred jumps in, this will probably bare little resemblance to a conventional campaign. He doesn't like running that sort of a campaign. He chucked all that away in '94, and ran as himself, and it endeared him to voters. They understood him, where he stood, what he meant, and what he planned to do in DC.
In an age where politicos say what they think people want to hear, Fred could turn those tabels, and say what he KNOWS the people want to hear. Even better, he knows he can get it done.
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 11:42 AM
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