Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

Leftwing bloggers aren't writing much about Fred Thompson yet, but do not be mislead by their silence: the Left fears a Fred Thompson candidacy. To explain why, I'll point you to the words of a young liberal voter writing for the leftwing Huffington Post, recounting his conversation with Thompson...

In the end, I have to admit that I was impressed by Thompson. Sometimes when you meet someone you get a sense of whether they are real or fake. And sometimes you are taken in by an amiable, charming person you might not otherwise agree with.

It's hard for me to tell which category I fall into in this instance, but I came away with the impression that Senator Thompson was not your average politician. He really was frustrated with the way the system is set against change. He was very open about his thoughts, his weaknesses and his ideas on real issues.

I am sure that if he ran I would find many areas of significant disagreement with him, but as a person in a room talking with someone he had never met before, he was friendly, honest and very likeable. Even more important than all of that, he was - at least for this conversation - eminently reasonable.

He sounded like the kind of Republican I used to be. I'm sure that's why I found him so reasonable. It would be interesting if he ran a campaign the way he just talked to me one on one.

That's exactly the way Thompson campaigns.

Translation: Thompson is a conservative whom non-conservatives find attractive. That's why the Huffington Post couldn't let that nice post praising Sen. Thompson stand unchallenged. And so another leftwing contributor to the site calls him a "rightwing hack" and trots out a list of votes that, well, that sound pretty good to this conservative.

Of course, the Left called Ronald Reagan all kinds of names, too - while moderate Democrats voted for him in droves.