Slate Thompson Takeout
by Ryan Sager
Sun, 22 Apr 2007 at 7:32 PM
updated Sun, 22 Apr 2007 at 7:34 PM
Slate's John Dickerson has a piece up (on Slate, oddly enough) giving a pretty surface-level look at why conservatives might come to have second thoughts about Fred Thompson — or, at the very least, second thoughts about crowning him the second coming of Ronald Reagan.
I think most of it is dead on, though I'm not sure any of it is fatal to a potential Thompson candidacy.
First and foremost, I think Mr. Dickerson is right about how damaging Mr. Thompson's ties to John McCain could be. Mr. McCain is heavily disliked by the Republican base. But who was Mr. McCain's 2000 campaign co-chairman? That's right, the senator from Law & Order.
Worse, by an order of magnitude, is the fact that Mr. Thompson was not only a friend to Mr. McCain, he was a true-believer in the legislative malfeasance that may ultimately have signed Mr. McCain's fate: McCain-Feingold. Mr. Thompson co-sponsored the most egregious assault on the First Amendment since the Alien and Sedition Acts.
My favorite item mentioned in the Slate article, however, is this:
He's a consistent federalist: Believing in states' rights is a central tenet of conservative thinking, but so is opposition to homosexuality and support for sweeping tort reform. Thompson opposes gay marriage but believes states should be allowed to sanction civil unions, as the governor of the early-primary state New Hampshire has just said he'll do. While in the Senate, Thompson, a former trial lawyer, also resisted one of the tenets of the Contract With America that called for limitations on malpractice awards—an issue he thinks should be left to the states.
It's my favorite because I really don't know if it's right or wrong. The kind of Republican Party I'd like to see would treat a serious commitment to federalism as a serious virtue. But a more federalist Republican Party would also have to mean a Republican Party less committed to thwarting gay marriage and civil unions and more comfortable with allowing economic and social liberalism generally, in states that choose to go in that direction.
So far, I think, Mr. Thompson has the clearest track record of any of the Republican candidates (OK, he's not a candidate yet) on federalism. But I'd note that both Rudy Giuliani and Mr. McCain have made serious noises about federalism as well. The only candidates who's had little to say on federalism on the Republican side, so far, has been Maladroit Mitt.
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