As a lot of people chatter about the departure of Fred Thompson from the race, I’m sitting here thinking about the last 9 months and wondering how I can ever look my party in the face again. For that matter, I don’t see how I can look my fellow voters in the face. Fred Thompson ran the race we all claim we want to see. For that, he got disparaging remarks about his vigor, his ambition, his wife, and his personal appearance.
It really is sad. We claim we want a candidate to talk seriously about the issues, to put forth bold policy proposals and debate on the merits of his plan. In a race crowded with style, Fred was all substance. Yet the people looked away.
In a campaign marked by cat-fights between candidates constantly engaging in underhanded digs at others’ religion, age, and life story, Fred took the high road and stuck to records, and policy. With debates that more closely resembled a three ring circus of 30 second sound bites, Fred stood, hands down, taller than the rest and demanded a little dignity.
The one “failing” of Fred Thompson seems to have been the fact that he refused to be treated like some retarded, inbred poodle jumping through every hoop the media threw in front of him.
When he built and unveiled his Internet presence, the media panned his effort with calls that he ‘plans to run his whole show online.’
When he and Jeri appeared in public, the media savaged his wife as a gold-digger, an interloper in the First Lady sweepstakes, and as a micromanaging puppet master working the strings of the campaign.
When he chose to spend time with his family, the media called him lazy, disinterested, and uncommitted.
Yet that lazy, uncommitted, disinterested candidate was the only one in the race saying something that mattered. He was the only one talking in complete sentences about the issues our nation faces. He was putting forth plans that got noticed by economists and experts as being serious and substantive. He was the only one demanding an end to the pageantry and a beginning to a new era of serious policy based campaigns. He was the only one that made it through the debates with his honesty and integrity in check.
It was, in short, exactly the kind of race we claim we want. He was, by placing his priorities on his family and not the sideshow, exactly the candidate we claim we want.
Yet once we got the campaign we’ve asked for, and once we got the candidate we asked for, he was labeled ‘lazy’ and ‘not serious’.
Well, at this point, all I can say to America is congratulations. You will get the President you deserve. You can pick from 32 flavors of vanilla. You can pick from the 6 remaining monkeys who are rabid enough in their pursuit of self-glorification that they will dance as you grind your organ. You can hold your nose and cast a ballot for candidates that perpetuate this ridiculous system we have created.
As for me, I’ll be sitting out the Presidential election this year. I am unable to find anything in the remaining candidates on either side that gives me hope at a time when we really need it. I’ll sit and ponder the death of statesmanship knowing that our American Idol obsessed culture has taken another step away from electing leaders and another step down the road of electing entertainers.
At this point I don’t see why you don’t chuck it all and simply let the winner of Bruno and Carrie’s Dance War run our nation for the next four years. I’ll bet they dance to your music better than any of the candidates you have left.
I am disappointed that Fred Thompson withdrew before I had a chance to vote for him (California voter). I would have been much happier with a Huckabee withdrawal. I also don’t have much use for Duncan Hunter or Ron Paul.
As for being mis-characterized, I think that is the media’s doing.
It’s absolutely the media. They say they want high-minded campaigns, but they’re so busy covering the circus they don’t recognize it when it happens.
My sentiments almost exactly. When Huckabee did well in Iowa I sensed that many who consider themselves Republicans today do not base this identification on the Federalist principles espoused by Fred Thompson. I had never been as deeply involved as I was this primary season and had not had such intense feelings about a candidate since Ronald Reagan. I found that I have apparently held very misplaced views regarding the nature of our Republican party population. This primary campaign is left with the following:
McCain – He seems very weak on tax and fiscal matters and not very Republican. He was completely wrong on the immigration bill he co-sponsered with Ted Kennedy and he was wrong when he did not support tax cuts.
Romney – He sometimes says pretty much the right things but I don’t sense a strong conviction but rather a lot of adaptability to meet any current requirements to please the identified electorate. His record is not consistent. I just feel he has been planning a run for the Presidency for a long time and that turns me off.
Giuliani- He is weak on social aspects of concern to me and has no proven record of conservatism on taxes and spending. His experience from the 9/11 crises is good for handling a local disaster but does not prove he can handle relations with countries around the world. I guess my biggest problem with Rudy is he still looks like a liberal to me. I’m not convinced he will do very well outside Fla, NY, Ca in the primaries.
Huckabee- Here is the one that really revealed the makeup of the Republican primary voters. First, after the Iowa results the so-called evangelicals seem to be focused on social issues (mainly religious) and appear to be somewhat bigoted at that (judging by how the voting broke down in Iowa between Huckabee and Romney.)
Paul-What can I say? This man gets a lot right but I cannot deal with how he approaches foreign affairs.
Fred was the man with the correct positions on the issues but as you already pointed out issues are the last thing being considered. Style and appeal on a very narrow range of issues is carrying the day. The primary system also causes problems. The Republican party needs to take a close look at itself but more than that is how do we educate our electorate so they will have something more than a simpleminded understanding of what is going on. We are beginning to look like Great Britain where the ‘conservatives’ think they are ‘conservative’ as long as they stay just to the right of the Labour Party. Maybe the world has passed us by.
I find myself thinking that a lot. Not that I long for “the good old days of the 1950s”, as the caricature of Republicans would suggest. I just long for the days when people had a healthy degree of skepticism that the Government was the answer to all their prayers.
[...] now broken. I have worked through the five stages of grief over Thompson’s withdrawal and said my piece about that. The gloves are coming off, and over the next 9 1/2 months, it’s on. I’m back and [...]
[...] Michael Turk, Thompson’s web guru who hired me, wrote, Fred Thompson ran the race we all claim we want to see. For that, he got disparaging remarks about his vigor, his ambition, his wife, and his personal appearance. [...]