VOLuntarilyConservative

Lots of midday political news related to the 2008 race.

First, Fred Thompson is simply on a roll, folks. I heard several distinct conversations at the courthouse today regarding Fred, and they ranged from politicos to average everyday citizens. All were positive, all knew that he was considering a run for the White House, and all seemed supportive (except die-hard Democratic lawyers, who, of course, will vote for the candidate most resembling Lenin).

And (note to A.C. - pay attention) it isn't just in Tennessee. Word today comes of a poll out of Iowa that shows Thompson in third, ahead of Governor Mitt Romney who has been in full-fledged campaign mode for well over a year. Also of interest is a straw poll out of Georgia that had Thompson beating all of the GOP candidates. I don't mean that Fred just won - I mean that he beat the totals of all of the other candidates combined.

Not bad for a guy who isn't even campaigning yet.

Second, it appears that Nancy French's website of choice, Evangelicals for Mitt, is being skewered due to its ties to those in the campaign. (I warned of this many moons ago, and anyone who didn't think that this wasn't going to surface had their head buried in the sand.) Check out the trail from Elephant Biz (run by Bill Hobbs, who has been more than fair to Romney - to the point where I thought Hobbs was jumping on the Romney bandwagon) to The American Spectator.

Nancy's husband, David French, a Harvard-trained attorney for the Christian group the Alliance Defense Fund, attempts to rebut the American Spectator piece. If you read David's piece carefully, you can start to see the holes in the story.

Bottom line: I like Nancy and David. They are great people, and the political process needs more like them. However, the ties to Romney's campaign are obvious. That isn't a crime or anything of the sort; it just makes the site another Astroturf effort at grassroots campaigning. The truth is that I don't know any evangelicals (outside of Nancy and David) who are supporting Governor Romney. (In fact, I don't know any supporting Guiliani or McCain, either, but there isn't an "Evangelicals for Rudy" site that I am aware of.)

And, David, your cries of implied bias by the author of the Spectator piece are silly. You threw stones at Thompson. Someone who likes Thompson threw them right back. He just happens to have a bigger audience than you, but that doesn't make his piece unfair or unpredictable.

Things are beginning to heat up - and I don't just mean the temperatures outside.

Labels: 2008 GOP Presidential Primary, Fred Thompson