Thursday, September 13, 2007

Fred, Fred, Fred   [Jonah Goldberg]

Ack! I cannot shake loose the Fredheads. I think this email makes a good point though, if not necessarily the one the author intends:

Subject: Thomspon is in, but not of, evil DC 

Okay, the subject line is kind of silly, but it does capture the fundamental idea of the following.

True, Thompson is not exactly a stranger to Washington.  The point to many of us, however, is that he is much closer to the out-of-the-beltway-and-in-flyover-country attitudes that many of us have - on abortion, the Second Amendment, same-sex marriage, federalism, taxes, etc.  So, he may be a DC insider, but he has consistently had a Red-state attitude on domestic issues.  The antonym of "Fred", for these issues, is "Rudy".  "Mitt" is often close to an antonym, but that, of course, depends solely on the office he's trying to obtain at the time.  He's very "viscoelastic" (time-dependent elastic, for non-geeks) on issues....

Me: What this reader really seems to be saying is that Fred's more conservative than the other guys. He may well be. But this isn't an inside-outside thing. Fred was a co-sponsor of McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. He was a muckety-muck lobbyist. He handled the inside-game (masterfully) in the Roberts confirmation process. You can score these facts as you see fit, but I don't think they add up to him being Mr. Outsider. Moreover, I still can't shake the sense that a great many of Thompson's fans are sold on the sizzle as opposed to the steak. Maybe there's a whole lot of red meat there. I just haven't been convinced yet. But I haven't been convinced by any of these guys yet.

09/13 01:37 PMShare