Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

It's Monday, so it's time for another edition of The Daily Fred, a round-up of news and blog coverage of the possible presidential candidacy of former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson. 

We start with John Fund's excellent and lengthy political profile of Thompson at OpinionJournal.com, in which Thompson tackles everything from campaign finance reform to the war, taxes, government spending and the economy, U.S. intelligence failures, Iran, tort reform and much much more. If you want to know what Thompson's thinking about the issues of the day, that's the place to start.

...Real Clear Politics' Peter Brown portrays the Fred Thompson buzz as an effort to avoid "buyer's remorse" before it happens:

A quiet effort has been underway to convince Fred Thompson, the former movie actor, turned U.S. senator, turned back into television star, to run. Thompson, who was also a Watergate prosecutor, had previously discouraged suggestions he run. But he is now considering the race, amid indications his conservative record combined with a blue-collar, pickup-truck appeal, to independents and moderate Democrats might make him the right guy at the right time.

For a "quiet effort," it sure is making lots of noise. 

...Thompson's winning lots of support in a number of online polls. He garnered 75 percent of the votes in a poll at the popular RedState website, and also kicked butt in the online poll on GOPNation.

But one prominent online poll continues to disrespect Fred. The "Washington Prowler" wonders if Pajamas Media is afraid of Thompson.

Why isn't it including Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson in its weekly presidential poll? That's what one blogger keeps asking, with nary and answer from the "Inside the Beltway" PJs crowd.

The blogger, PeteRepublic, has pulled the PJ online vote widget from his site in protest over the PJ Media decision to not include Thompson, an undeclared candidate who is the talk of conservatives and Republicans. Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich, also undeclared, is being touted in the poll. Odd.

It renders the poll rather pointless.

Meanwhile...

Tennessean columnist Gail Kerr has tracked down the red truck that Fred Thompson drove to victory in the 1994 U.S. Senate race. "With a package of Red Man chewing tobacco on the seat and country music blaring, Thompson drove from Mountain City to Memphis and back again." And flattened Rep. Jim Cooper's Senate dreams.

...George Bullard of the Detroit News' Politics Weblog, drools over the prospect of a general-election contest between Thompson and Barack Obama.

Both seem more straightforward than, say, Hillary [Clinton] and John McCain. McCain and Hillary are terminally old school in a country that needs some new school thinking.

...Washington Post political reporter and blogger Chris Cillizza makes the case why Thompson should run for president.

A recent CBS/New York Times showed that nearly six-in-ten Republican voters are unhappy with their party's current crop of 2008 White House hopefuls. Just 39 percent of Democrats said the same about their field.

That level of unhappiness is largely centered on the lack of a solidly conservative candidate who has a realistic chance at the nomination. Each of the three frontrunners -- John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani -- has flaws of differing sizes and shapes in the eyes of movement conservatives. The two social conservative candidates -- former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback -- have yet to prove they can compete with the campaign organizations and fundraising capacity of the frontrunners.

Enter Thompson. While he was never a leading social conservative voice in the Senate, Thompson's voting record during his eight years in Washington should be acceptable to anyone to the ideological right.

Later this week, Cillizza says, he'll post the case for why Thompson shouldn't run.

Will Thompson run? Eric Schelzig of the Associated Press notes that Thompson "isn't new to will-he-or-won't-he speculation about seeking public office" and flirted with running for president in 2000.

...Kleinheider? Still skeptical.

And, finally, the Memphis Daily News takes a look at the presidential prospects of Thompson, a University of Memphis grad:

When Fred Dalton Thompson graduated from Lawrence County High School in 1960, his classmates probably didn't envision the gregarious, fun-loving son of a used-car salesman one day becoming the leader of the free world.

Yet somehow, at a small tribute arranged for the former U.S. senator and University of Memphis graduate last year in Lawrenceburg, Tenn. - a country town about 175 miles east of Memphis - the presidency didn't seem far away at all. One of those present even assured him: "You're our best hope to have a class reunion at the White House."

"He really enjoyed that," said Thompson's cousin Anne Morrow, events coordinator for the town, when recalling the comment. "He ate that up like a Hershey bar."

The story recounts how Thompson began his first Senate run in Lawrenceburg, "his bucolic hometown in Lawrence County, where it's not uncommon to see the occasional Amish buggy mixed in with automobile traffic on the roads," back in 1994. Thompson announced his candidacy from the back of a flatbed truck in the public square, "not far from a life-size bronze statue of famed frontiersman Crockett," another hometown hero.

If Thompson decides to try for the presidency, he's been sent at least one invitation to come back to the square to make his official announcement. Thompson, a senator from 1994 to 2002, also might have a stretch of roadway in Lawrenceburg named after him. The Tennessee legislature appears likely to vote during the current session on renaming a portion of Highway 43 that runs through town "Fred Thompson Boulevard."

Stay tuned...

Fred Thompson on Film: Thompson played Rear Adm. Joshua Painter in the 1980 thriller The Hunt for Red October.