The “patio gas” bomb defused in Haymarket would have generated a fireball the size of a house and a shock wave spreading out over a diameter of at least 400 yards, explosives experts said today.
Well, I mean, if it was the diameter of at least 400 yards, that's only a radius of 200 yards, right? No biggie, London's a huge city. Might be a bit problematic for anybody in the area, but otherwise just worthy of a yawn?
“Hundreds of people could have been injured if they had been in the area at the time. The knock-on effects of breaking glass are particularly devastating, for example.
Oh, injured? Are we talking about little purple-ouchy injured? Oh, wait, liberals aren't supposed to joke about purple-ouchies!
Kudos to the Brits, who have lots of experience with bomb plots.
Police were alerted this morning to a suspicious vehicle in The Haymarket area in the heart of theatreland, close to Regent Street's popular shopping area.
A witness reported seeing gas canisters being removed from the car, believed to be a silver Mercedes, at around 4am.
The vehicle was covered in a blue tarpaulin as forensic teams examined it.
The area, including Piccadilly Underground station, has been cordoned off and will remain closed for some time, police said.
Not surprisingly, the Left views this as "Ho hum." Atrios:
Watching the CNN coverage of the thwarted car bombing in London I'm struck by how the coverage makes something that didn't happen thousands of miles away sound like something around the block. You know, foiled bomb plot in London! Terrorists crawling up through your toilet!
There are also the implications that such an event might practically shut down London, aided by images of the locked down site, which is of course absurd. Most people don't have the luxury of huddling under their beds, cowering in fear, even if they wanted to. But more to the point it's a big goddamn city and something almost happening in one part of it, even a central part, is for most people something quite far away.
We bring up the attempted bombing in London because that's just the sort of thing the Iraq war was supposed to be preventing, at least according to Joe Lieberman circa 2006. Amid news of a foiled plot to hijack jetliners and fly them into the United States, Lieberman said then: "If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out [of Iraq] by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It will strengthen them and they will strike again."
Yep, if there's another terrorist attack, it proves the Iraq War was useless.
This is pretty idiotic even for the Moonbats. A writer at Op-Ed News alerts us to the "March of the People".
The March of the People, a spontaneous sprout from the silent majority, stepped off from Chicago June 21 and will walk the 800 miles to the Capitol, arriving on the anniversary of 9/11. They will be met by marchers who are on the way from other directions.
We could be in D.C. on September 11 in the tens of millions to join them. Our interest groups and independent media could focus on getting people to the Capitol on September 11. Our members of Congress who stand by the Constitution could call us to the Capitol.
Tens of millions, eh? Well, as it turns out, the March of the People turns out to be a misnomer. It's actually the March of the Person.
A person named Mario Penalver. Despite some positively glowing coverage by the Left, so far it's a solo march. So in order to get the tens of millions that Kathlyn Stone fantasizes about, they're going to have to rustle up, oh, about 19,999,999 more folks.
In the 2004 election, at least 40% of the voters in the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group backed Bush, double the share of Hispanics who had supported Republican Bob Dole eight years earlier. But the inroads Bush made are vanishing.
The chief beneficiary for 2008 so far is Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton.
A new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll indicates that Hispanics, by nearly 3 to 1, say they're Democrats or lean that way. Of those, 59% support the New York senator over her presidential rivals — her strongest showing among any major demographic group and a huge potential asset for early contests in Nevada, Florida, California and other states with large Hispanic populations.
One big factor behind the flight from the GOP: a heated debate over immigration in which congressional Republicans' remarks on illegal immigrants have offended many Hispanic voters. The fallout from that battle, shifting Latino loyalties and a changing political calendar have scrambled political calculations made about Hispanics after the last presidential election — and raised the stakes for their role in choosing the Democratic nominee for the next one.
The worse news? If you hate the immigration bill (and most conservatives do) just wait until you see the one that President Hillary Clinton and an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress will ram through.
Reminding us once again why the Republicans are the "stupid party".
"The people who are actually working for the campaign are a little overwhelmed with what's happening," says Alex Wallenwein, a supporter who organized two of the 362 Meetup.com groups dedicated to Paul.
To many immersed in the political blogosphere, Paul's passionate supporters seem to be everywhere at once. Editors of political websites are inundated with angry e-mails demanding they devote more coverage to Paul. Blog posts that criticize Paul are often followed by hundreds of livid comments from his fans. Most frustrating to those not on board the Ron Paul bandwagon, he routinely ranks first in online presidential polls on sites ranging from CNN.com to niche political blogs.
But inevitably comes reality:
Conversely, Paul rates in the low single digits in scientific telephone polls and few political pundits afford him any chance of winning the nomination. When the editors at National Journal's The Hotline compiled their well-respected White House 2008 Rankings in May, they put Paul in last place among the 12 Republicans running, tacking on a fed-up message to his fans: "Just please stop e-mailing us."
Paul gets huge support from the moronic "Truthers"; check out the spelling on some of the angry comments on the Wired article:
First of all, could someone plaese explain to me what the heck is ment by the fallowing qoute taken from the above article?
This piece just makes me angrier and strengthens my resolve to tell all my friends about Ron Paul. And it definately puts Wired into the "them" camp as ...
The New York Times heralds a poll that shows that younger people are more liberal than the public at large.
Young Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage, according to a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll. The poll also found that they are more likely to say the war in Iraq is heading to a successful conclusion.
This, of course, is not news. Young people tend to be more liberal, but they become more conservative as they age. Essentially, liberalism appeals to the young because it offers something for nothing; it is not until kids get a little older that they realize that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Forty-four percent said they believed that same-sex couples should be permitted to get married, compared with 28 percent of the public at large. They are more likely than their elders to support the legalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana.
The findings on gay marriage were reminiscent of an exit poll on Election Day 2004: 41 percent of 18-to-29-year-old voters said gay couples should be permitted to legally marry, according to the exit poll.
That's still 56 percent who oppose gay marriage.
The poll also reveals some flawed thinking:
The survey also found that 42 percent of young Americans thought it was likely or very likely that the nation would reinstate a military draft over the next few years — and two-thirds said they thought the Republican Party was more likely to do so. And 87 percent of respondents said they opposed a draft.
Given that the Democrats are the only ones proposing this....
The second strong message is that the Republican race is much more fluid. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani began the year with about 37 percent in Cook/RT polling, staying about 13 to 19 points ahead of Sen. John McCain of Arizona. But in the latest four-poll sequence, Giuliani holds a much narrower lead, 25 percent to 21 percent. The combined sample of Republicans and GOP leaners has a 2.6-point error margin. Former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney were running about even for third place, with 12 percent and 10 percent, respectively. Other candidates received 2 percent or less.
But in the most recent survey of the four, Giuliani (22 percent) and McCain (21 percent) were virtually even at the top, as were Thompson (14 percent) and Romney (12 percent) one level back.
Sounds like the fundraising hasn't been going all that well for the Romney campaign:
Mitt Romney said yesterday he had once more turned to his personal fortune to help finance his presidential campaign and might do so again, suggesting that his fund-raising has fallen off since the first three months of the year.
And:
Depending on how his competitors do, a fund-raising drop-off for this quarter could be a serious turnabout for his campaign. Mr. Romney stunned many when he led all the Republican candidates in the first quarter of the year by raising roughly $23 million, including a $2.35 million loan he provided himself and described as “seed money” for his campaign.
The amount far exceeded his Republican opponents’ take. Rudolph W. Giuliani was closest with about $14 million. Mr. Giuliani and Senator John McCain are expected to top their first quarter totals for the three-month period that ends Saturday. Mr. McCain raised $12.5 million in the first three months of the year.
The money game is important, because it is the only "hard" metric that reporters can point to at this stage in the campaign. I have received mail solicitations from Romney and Giuliani.
The Rumors of John McCain's Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated
The London Times publishes speculation that John McCain could drop out of the race by the fall.
The speculation, vigorously denied by McCain’s camp, is sweeping Republican circles after a disastrous few weeks in which the principled Arizona senator has clashed with the party’s conservative base on immigration and also alienated independent voters by backing President George W Bush’s troop surge in Iraq.
I don't think there's any doubt that McCain has taken a hit on immigration (I am pleased that the Times acknowledges that it's a principled stand), but the real question is whether he can recover in time for the primaries early next year, and I see no reason not to believe that is possible.
Remember, McCain beats Hillary. Thompson and Romney lose to Hillary.
We have almost seven months before the first primary. That's longer than the campaigns have operated thus far in 2007. No one has even reached the half-way wark, and one major candidate (Fred Thompson) hasn't even entered the race yet. McCain has plenty of time to regroup and attempt to make up lost ground.
One publicly uncommitted Wise Man told us that he was hearing rumors that a group of "concerned citizens" was going to approach New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte and ask her to "formally look into the matter".
This story has been getting a little wilder as the details come out. First, in a rather amusing campaign analysis of the Mitt Romney's campaign, the New York Times reporter, Mark Liebovich, mentions an encounter with an overbearing staffer:
He travels with an entourage that includes two or three “operations” guys who serve as advance men and a security detail. (Between stops in New Hampshire, this reporter found himself trailing the former governor’s S.U.V. on a back road, only to be led to the shoulder and instructed to “veer off” by a man wearing an earpiece who emerged from Mr. Romney’s car. “We ran your license plate,” he told the reporter, and explained that no one was permitted to follow Mr. Romney’s vehicle.)
Sounds like Secret Service men doesn't it? But it turns out that's not the case, because Romney doesn't yet have Secret Service protection. He's got rentacops playing Secret Service.
It turns out that Romney maintained as governor an Office of Operations that was sort of informal secret service for the governor. Here’s a description of his operation from a 2005 Boston Herald article:
Some office staff, who all wear LXX pins, fashion themselves as U.S. Secret Service agents, referring to Romney in their earpieces and audio-equipped wrist pieces as "70" - similar to the way the Secret Service agents identify President Bush as "43" because he is the 43rd president.
Romney is the 70th governor of Massachusetts, to answer the obvious question. However, as he is now a private citizen, I assume that these guys are now on the campaign's payroll. It turns out that Jay Garrity, who either waved over the NY Times' reporter or was in charge of those who did, is something of a police wannabe:
A top aide to Gov. Mitt Romney was cited last week for tooling around with illegal police equipment in his private car - from lights and sirens to batons and heavily tinted windows.
Romney’s director of operations, Jay A. Garrity, had parked the car illegally in the North End and police ordered it towed.
Police discovered a set of red-and-blue flashing lights hidden in the grill - equipment for which Garrity has no permit.
Cops also found a siren and public address system, multiple police radios, strobe lights on the wheels, a police baton and a metal plate with a photo of a state police patch that said “official business.'’
Garrity's the guy with the coffee cup; the other two gentlemen are former Mass. Governor William Weld and former Senator Jim Talent. (See update below; Talent has the coffee cup. Thanks to commenter Rachel for the correction)
Of course the story doesn't stop there. Romney's campaign issued a semi-denial:
Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's campaign denies a report that security aides pulled over a New York Times reporter trailing the former governor's caravan in New Hampshire, checked his license plates and told him to leave.
Liebovich pointed out that he never claimed that they'd actually run his plates, just that the rent-a-cop told him that they'd run the plates:
“As we reported, I was instructed to veer off, which to me is the same as telling someone to leave,” Leibovich said in an interview. “I obviously cannot speak to whether they ran my license plate or not. I can only speak to what the person told me he was doing.”
Incidentally, Garrity is reportedly 29 years old.
A personal aside: When I was in college, I worked for several years at a drive-in movie theater as a rampman, essentially a security guard. One summer they hired this guy named Mike to work with me. He was a big BS'er, talking about his experiences in 'Nam until the day we hired an actual veteran, at which point he suddenly lost interest in the topic. But he was also a cop wannabe, and a royal pain in the neck to work with.
For example, one Friday night it was getting late and there were only a couple of cars left in the theater, so I hopped in the car, unlocked the back gate, and picked up a sixpack of beer at a nearby liquor store. I then unlocked the back gate again and started driving in, when Mike pops out of the bushes and yells, "Halt!" Of course, Sherlock couldn't figure out that the only person who could open the back gate was somebody with a key.
So I have a pretty good image of Garrity in my mind.
Update: My bad on the id of Garrity; the guy with the coffee cup is Talent. Garrity is on the far right, almost too dark to make out in the original photo, so I've adjusted the Gamma a bit:
Tax the man behind the tree! Proving once again that the Democrats (and some Republicans) never met a tax they didn't like (and didn't want to hike), Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley are proposing a breathtaking tax increase on private equity buyout firms. Larry Kudlow has the details:
Up to now, Blackstone's authoring statement had envisioned some kind of two-tiered tax plan, where ordinary corporate compensation would be taxed at the 35% corporate rate while high-risk investment-fund profits would be taxed at the 15% capgains rate. And now, Senators Baucus of Montana and Grassley of Iowa want Blackstone to pay the much higher corporate tax on all its income.
We have traditionally had lower tax rates for longer-term, higher-risk investments because the country recognizes that this is the seed capital for America's future growth. That this is a highly targeted tax increase can be seen in the bill's opening statement:
Section 1. Exception from treatment of publicly traded partnerships as corporations not to apply to partnerships directly or indirectly deriving income from providing investment adviser and related asset management services.
What's behind it? Kudlow has a suggestion:
Class envy is behind all this. It's an envy that despises the investment clout of buyout firms, even though these buyouts create leaner, more-productive, more-efficient companies that are better able to compete in the era of globalization. These buyouts are a necessary capitalist churning, but many politicians would prefer the status quo. In particular, labor unions are pushing their Democratic allies to stop the buyout movement in order protect inefficient jobs and oversized benefits.
"Don't ever question my patriotism," a clean-shaven, besuited Moore bellowed at a questioner at New York's plush Regency Hotel on Park Avenue yesterday where he was promoting Sicko, a new documentary that tears the scab off the profit-driven US health system.
"I am a patriotic American. The most patriotic thing you can do is question your government, especially when they're screwing up like they are by not providing healthcare to our 9/11 rescue workers."
But later:
"When you see these people suffering and dying, those who ran down there and risked their lives (at Ground Zero), I'm ashamed of that as an American," Moore said.
On Technorati, which offers a real-time glimpse of the blogosphere, the most frequently searched term this week was "YouTube."
Then comes "Ron Paul."
The presence of the obscure Republican congressman from Texas on a list that includes terms such as "Sopranos," "Paris Hilton" and "iPhone" is a sign of the online buzz building around the long-shot Republican presidential hopeful -- even as mainstream political pundits have written him off.
No, it's a sign that some tech-savvy college kids have figured out a way to spam the heck out of Technorati to make it seem like everybody and his brother are trying to find out about Ron Paul. It's an impressive effort, no denying it, but it's astro-turfing, not real grassroots support. Paul's supporters are buying headlines but they are not moving the meters that matter: the polls.
Ruh-Roh! Hillary Clinton Leads Thompson and Romney, Trails McCain and Giuliani
Rasmussen polling shows that Hillary beats Fred Thompson, 48%-43%. She trounces Mitt Romney, 50%-41%. On the other hand, Giuliani squeaks past Hillary 47%-44%, and our man John McCain beats her 48%-42%.
I keep telling you folks, nominate Thompson and Romney if you want to hear the words, "President-Elect Clinton" next November. Hillary is going to get the nomination; even the nutroots seem to have figured that one out. Now the question is whether the Republicans have figured out who's going to beat her.
But what both Obama and Clinton have figured out is that the best way to protect themselves from Republican criticism (aka "rightwing ammo") in the general election is by not allowing their positions and their persona to be shaped by the hard left. If Obama is nominated, the left-wing bloggers will do their bit by urging leftists (the only group with whose voting pattern they even arguably can influence) to vote for him. And, having kept his distance from these bloggers, Obama will be in a good position to compete for independent and centrist voters.
The same situation will obtain if, as seems likely, Hillary is the nominee.
But I had to chortle when I got over to the Jerome Armstrong post, because it is thoroughly deluded:
In Obama latest, he sent me an email titled, "What a movement looks like?" His campaign probably didn't notice the slip, but it's an obvious truth--that adding that "?" in the title. Maybe, he thinks, he's in one... maybe not... who can tell? He wouldn't have a clue, I'm beginning to think-- that the campaign really doesn't know what a movement is made up of and are fumbling in the dark amidst their media-created momentum (which is getting primed to turn on its creation). And who's got Obama's back when the media does turns on its creation? The netroots doesn't; he's never aligned with the existing movement that began with Dean in '02, swelled for Wesley Clark in '03, led Dean to the DNC Chair and propelled the Hackett and Lamont candidacies, leading to the surge of activists voting for Democrats in '06.
Yeah, they did a lot for Howard Dean in '02, and Weasely Clark in '03, so much that these two combined for 2 primary wins in 2004. And they propelled the Hackett and Lamont candidacies to defeat, not victory, remember?
It's ludicrous that some point toward the outreach and early partnership that Edwards has done with the blogging community and the netroots in the same manner that a candidate reaches out to an issue base group, and and argue from there that Obama doesn't kowtow to such groups. First of all, that's bs, he does plenty of pandering and is very ordinary in that regard; but more fundamentally, this is the base of the Democratic party's rapid response team. The issue is combating the rightwing machine in unison with Democratic candidates, but you can't partner with a candidate that not inclined to join the partisan progressive movement. In all those emails, Obama has never once even associated with the word Democrat or Democratic, not mentioning either word even once. Edwards and Clinton do. Whose nomination is Obama running for?
Translation: He panders to us, just not enough to make us feel important.
Thompson: The Supreme Court has attempted to delineate the constitutionally appropriate roles for individual and governmental decision-making on the issue of abortion. Beyond that, I believe that the federal government should not interfere with individual convictions and actions in this area
I would make an exception to this general rule of governmental non-interference in a very limited number of cases where government has a compelling interest in promoting the public welfare. For instance, I believe that states should be allowed to impose various restrictions if they so choose.
I've said in the past that I think there ought to be room in the Republican Party for pro-choice candidates. However, I have to admit that I'm a little surprised that three of the top four candidates for the Republican nomination (Thompson, Romney and Giuliani have all at various times been in favor of retaining legalized abortion.
First Rachel was raped. Then she was a passenger on one of the London Tube trains that was blown up on 7/7/05. And after that, she was stalked by a cyber-kook. And then the London blogging community came together to catch the stalker.
I'm not going in today, because need to rest up, but I bloody well am getting on the tube on Monday. And yes, I probably will feel scared and I probably will remember the bomb, but as I said to someone yesterday, when we were on the train stuck underground, coughing, 'well, we've now established that we can survive a tube bomb, so sod it, yes, I am going to travel again'.
I don't see what else to do really. Today, lots of people on the tube will be worrying about what if and whether they'd cope, and I 'll know I did cope, we all coped, which is kind of empowering really. I'm scared but I'm angry, so I'm using the anger to get through it. We all need to go to work. Life goes on.
And then the harassment began. Felicity Jane Lowde began a campaign of stalking Rachel (and others). Eventually she was arrested and was scheduled for trial. But Lowde did not show up for her trial, and apparently was on the lam in London. However, she continued her campaign of harassment, apparently using Cyber-Cafes to make her posts. So the London blogging community put out a call for people to look for her, and attempt to track her down, which finally happened late last week.
"Following tip-offs from members of the public who were aware of the Find the Stalker blogger campaign, Felicity Jane Lowde was arrested in a cyber-café in Brick Lane on 6 June and taken into police custody overnight," said North on her blog.
"For me, I don't feel like dancing. I am just thankful this is over (or almost over, as I am sure Lowde will appeal her conviction, and her sentence too, when she is sentenced)."
Lowde was refused bail and will be remanded in custody until 28 June pending psychiatric and pre-sentence reports.
The woman faces a maximum jail sentence of six months or a fine of up to £5,000.
Kudos to Rachel, who's now a survivor three times over.
According to popular folklore, Chinese people should take their surnames from a list of 100 names.
But as the country's population continues to soar, the excess of Wangs, Lis and Zhangs is leading to confusion.
There are now 93,000 people called Wang Tao alone, the China Daily newspaper said in reporting the review by the Ministry of Public Security, the police service, which handles identity registration.
Not sure how many people are named Wang Dang Doodle, though.
Meanwhile, Islamic fundamentalists have found a way around the prohibition against unmarried men and women working together:
First came the breast-feeding fatwa. It declared that the Islamic restriction on unmarried men and women being together could be lifted at work if the woman breast-fed her male colleagues five times, to establish family ties.
As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."
The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.
"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviwing the documents.
Let's remember that the Pentagon did not approve funding for this "weapon"; it was just a proposal like lots of other proposals. I would certainly say that the Pentagon should consider all possible weapons; in the winnowing process most of the kooky ideas (like this one) will end up on the floor.
Here's an interesting video of the senator on the campaign trail. Interesting stuff, and note how seriously the New Hampshire residents take their duty, particularly the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning.
Fascinating stuff; I have new respect for candidates who do this every day, although I have to admit, McCain certainly seems to be enjoying it!
Something You May Have Missed At the Debate Yesterday
Dealing with the 9-11 kooks over at Screw Loose Change, I've been caught up in a completely separate world from the rest of the political blogosphere. The "Truthers" are certainly out there on the edge.
One of the things they have been doing is confronting candidates on the campaign trail; I'm sure many of you have seen the videos of John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani having to deal with these crackpots:
Well, last night, CNN gave press passes to some of these tinfoil hatters, and predictably, they got into it with one of Rudy's flacks in the Spin Room:
The altercation ended with Matt Lepacek, the "reporter" for Infowars (Truther demagogue Alex Jones' operation) getting thrown out of the room. Sadly, CNN staffers reportedly attempted to prevent this from happening:
Though CNN staff members tried to persuade police not to arrest the accredited reporter-- in violation of the First Amendment, Lepacek was taken to jail. The police station told JonesReport.com that Lepacek is being charged with felony criminal trespass.
They don't call it the Clinton News Network for nothing!
On a serious note, CNN deserves a good razzing for allowing these kooks into the room. The media were in charge of this event; they have to do some screening of the press and make some tough decisions. Allowing multiple members of the Infowars (there were at least 4-5 of their "reporters" in attendance) is a mistake; allowing one might be a mistake. These folks are dangerously unbalanced and odds are high that one of them will turn Taxi Driver. If CNN won't do their job, the Secret Service should.
A compound word, beginning with "cluster" seems to summarize things:
The sudden appearance of a cash-donation box on the future site of the Flight 93 memorial park in Somerset County has infuriated relatives of the crash victims, and, some believe, could signal a breakdown in negotiations with a key landowner, jeopardizing plans for the 1,100-acre national park.
Svonavec, who leased the Flight 93 land to a coal company prior to 9/11, said he had lost money on leases for land within the memorial area. He has spent $10,000 a month for security since February, when $1 million in post-9/11 federal funding dried up, he said.
The security may be necessary; some of the more ghoulish 9-11 Truthers are not above trying to dig up wreckage to find out what "really" crashed there on 9-11.
A lot of interest in this "non-campaign" campaign. John Fund:
He lacks the compelling story of Rudy Giuliani during 9/11. He isn't a war hero with a 24-year record in Congress like John McCain. He doesn't have the M.B.A. smoothness and business success of Mitt Romney. But what Fred Thompson demonstrated to an enthusiastic Virginia Republican Party dinner Saturday is that he has gravitas, a presence and the ability to make people comfortable. Most importantly, many at the dinner saw him as a conservative who doesn't alienate or cause angst with any element of the GOP coalition.
That's a fair assessment, I would say. Although of course one of the reasons Thompson does not alienate a lot of the coalition is that he hasn't run for office since 1996 and thus has not had to take stands on current issues.
While it was clear Mr. Thompson has found a way to excite the Republican base, his impending candidacy is at a crossroads. He has run what Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard calls "the greatest non-campaign campaign I've ever seen" and has managed to land in the upper ranks of the crowded GOP field without spending any money. But when his actual campaign begins next month, a different standard of success will be applied.
Many doubt he can catch the front-runners with such a late start in raising money, organization and endorsements. He responds that "it's too late to follow those rules even if I wanted to, and I don't want to." Instead he plans to use new technology in innovative ways that include everything from the Internet to distributing videos to cell phones. Less tech-savvy primary voters can expect to see Mr. Thompson as a constant presence on talk radio and cable TV news. Will that be enough? Much of it may depend on just how much Mr. Thompson can build on the success of Howard Dean in 2004 in harnessing the power of the Internet as a fund-raising tool.
Let me remind Mr Fund that Howard Dean's success was all in 2003; once 2004 started his campaign had almost no success.
But in other ways, Thompson remains resolutely a non-candidate. When those aides were asked for a copy of the speech their new boss was about to deliver, they explained that there was no such thing. Thompson would speak from the heart, or at least a few scrawled notes. And when he did speak, there were the first notes of a stump speech in that very familiar low boom of a drawl.
Speaking to Republicans who have suffered a string of losses, Thompson acknowledged that the party “was a bit down politically right now.” But he added, hopefully, that “tonight we’re on the comeback trail.”
Yet in trying to fire up the crowd, he stopped short of declaring his intention to lead that comeback.
I don't know what Martin means by a "string" of losses; we lost in 2006, but we won in 2000, 2002 and 2004.
Okay, so it's Joe Klein and that means take it with more than a usual grain of salt:
In fact, when Romney slowed down and focused on a single issue — immigration — at a press conference in Dover, N.H., the brazen cynicism of his candidacy became almost embarrassing. He has flipped on immigration, to better suit the Mexican-fearing tendencies of a segment of the Republican base. He's against the comprehensive reform bill being considered by the Senate, and, of course, that's because the bill would offer a path to citizenship for the 12 million illegals currently in the country. A reporter asks, What would you do about them? Make them get in the back of the line. Would they have to leave the country to do that? Mumble mumble evasion. Would you be in favor of kicking them out? Oh, no, not that. Then what would you actually favor? "I'm not going to lay down a posture different from the others being considered." Interesting: Romney takes postures, not positions.
And Klein is absolutely on the money on one point:
But there isn't the slightest hint of courage or conviction in his stump act. It's a candidacy for the era before 2001, before things got serious. And his success or failure will be a reflection of how serious the electorate is in 2008.
Fred Thompson is now apparently in the race. As others have pointed out, this may be his big mistake; he's like the backup quarterback on many NFL teams. He's the most popular guy in town right up until the moment that he actually gets into the game, when everybody realizes that he's not the savior.
But there’s no denying that Fred Thompson has one of the most profound personality cults we’ve seen in politics for a long time. While traveling around the country in recent months, I’ve been amazed at how many rank-and-file Republicans see Thompson as a secular savior, as if Thompson were designed by GOP-friendly alien scientists as some sort of Super Candidate.
I like Thompson, but he's got a long way to go to establish that he's a credible candidate.
