Fredapalooza: Who Wins? Who Loses?
by Ryan Sager
Thu, 31 May 2007 at 9:15 AM
updated Thu, 31 May 2007 at 9:24 AM
Robert Novak weighs in this morning with a pretty enthusiastic column about Fred Thompson's entry into the race. (Perhaps making up for his savaging of Mr. Thompson back at the beginning of the month, after the former senator's lackluster speech in Orange County.)
So, with all the Fred buzz, it seems a good time to take stock of who wins and who loses. After all, everybody's doing it...
I'll take things in reverse order from loses to wins:
Mitt Romney: I said it the moment Mr. Thompson began to look like a serious candidate, and it's since become the conventional wisdom. Mitt gets hurt worst. There's only room for one candidate to be the "true conservative" in the field, and Mr. Thompson will now occupy that space. It's not that Mr. Thompson's credentials are impeccable — he supported campaign-finance reform (a big no-no, for which he will need to atone) and was nominally pro-choice during his Senate career (though his votes were pretty much exclusively on the pro-life side). But these minor transgressions beat Mr. Romney's all-over-the-place record by a mile. Mr. Romney supported quite sever campaign-finance restrictions not so long ago; and his abortion switch is already a matter of much dispute among conservatives. Note Gary Bauer's comments to me in my most recent column. Mr. Thompson already enters the race ahead of Mr. Romney; I'd expect serious defections in coming weeks.
John McCain: What to say about Mr. McCain? He's already stuck in the mud, looking like yesterday's news and unable to break through a ceiling around 20% in the polls. The conservative electorate knows him, and they just don't like him. If Mr. McCain was hoping that conservatives would be forced to settle for him (as in: Dole '96), this only makes that more unlikely. Also, one can hardly overlook the fundraising hit Mr. McCain is likely to take from this. Mr. McCain posted a disastrous first quarter with the FEC. If anything I'm hearing is true, he's not on track for a very good second quarter, either. Mr. Thompson is now going to soak up some of the cash that might have come Mr. McCain's way in the June mad dash. Bad news for the Maverick all around, I'd say. It's also worth noting that Mr. McCain now has to run against a friend: Mr. Thompson was a co-chair of the McCain campaign back in 2000. When Mr. McCain brutalized Mr. Romney a little while back on immigration, he went easy on Mr. Thompson, saying: "I'm a little disappointed in Fred, ‘cause, again, he had a very — a different position not that long ago." Things will only get tougher. If there's any silver lining here for Mr. McCain, it's that anything bad for Mr. Romney is good for Mr. McCain. The McCain camp clearly sees Mr. Romney as a huge threat — they're out attacking him daily, on and off the record — so they can only be happy to see him take a hit.
Rudy Giuliani: With one caveat, this is all good news for Mr. Giuliani. While Mr. Thompson has so far cut into Mr. Giuliani's support the most in the polls, from a strategic standpoint, the Rudy folks have got to be thrilled. They were already in a great position with Messrs. McCain and Romney tearing into each other — now they'll have three candidates clawing at each other. This dynamic could also make it easier for Mr. Giuliani to pull off a victory in one or more of the early primary states, if Messrs. Romney and Thompson are splitting the social-conservative vote. That one caveat? It ain't good for Mr. Giuliani if Mr. Thompson wins.
The Seven Dwarfs: This is excellent news for the rest of the field. They can all drop out and save their time and money.
Related Topics: GOP Primary
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