The Christian Science Monitor says the reaction from members of the Lincoln Club of Orange County, California, to Fred Thompson's speech that that group, was "decidedly mixed." The article also asserts - based on comments from one Vanderbilt University political science professor - that Thompson's appeal will be limited to southern Christian conservatives and not easily extend to "business conservatives" and "classic California conservatives."
"It's a split within the Republican party," says Professor John Geer of Vanderbilt University, an expert on presidential campaigns. "He's not going to necessarily be superpopular around classic conservative Californians. His base will be more in the South. The conservative Christian segment of the party will be much more comfortable with Thompson than with Romney."
That's an odd assessment given that, while his voting record in the U.S. Senate is one that will please social conservatives, Thompson has never been a big outspoken figure representing the Christian right.
The CSM encapsulates Thompson's political history in a few short paragraphs:
In 1994, he trounced a rival in a special election for the Senate seat that Al Gore had vacated to become vice president. He was easily reelected in 1996. He led hearings into campaign fundraising abuses, and he voted for a campaign-finance reform bill that remains a political liability for him with many conservatives.
Thompson didn't just vote for "a campaign-finance reform bill," he voted for the McCain-Feingold bill, known as the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act. While conservatives tend to oppose that vote, it's less of a liability for Thompson than it is for its namesake, John McCain.
One constant in his voting record is a distaste for federal bureaucracy and an impatience with the procedural rigmaroles on Capitol Hill. His belief that most policymaking should be left to the states led to votes against popular bills to toughen drunken-driving laws and ban guns near schools.
The CSM has discovered that Fred's a federalist. Business conservatives may not be smitten with Thompson's southern roots, but they do like federalists - because they, like federalists, want less federal government regulation of business.
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