Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

The Tennessean has published part two of its three-part profile of former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, focusing on Thompson's years in the U.S. Senate and his experience in Washington D.C.

While part one was written by a staffer at the Nashville newspaper, part two comes from a Gannett News Service writer, who also turned in a sidebar that accuses Thompson of being a "lazy" senator - based solely on the second-hand say-so of one liberal journalist and one liberal lobbyist whose favored candidates have either been defeated by Thompson in the past or whose ambitions are threatened by his potential candidacy now.

Here's a section of the profile story...

An examination of his three-plus decades in the capital reveals Thompson as a tenacious investigator and successful lobbyist but a sometimes frustrated and uneven lawmaker who bridled at the slow pace during his eight years in the Senate.

"The Senate was not a natural place for Thompson," said Norm Ornstein, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute think tank and an expert on Congress and Washington politics. "Spending a lot of time sitting around picking your rear end was not his idea of a good time.

"He has a lot more of an executive personality," Ornstein said. Thompson is a visiting fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based institute.

The article also includes a list of Thompson's lobbying clients through the years, and also a list of what the Gannett News Service deems to be "key votes" he cast in the Senate. There's also a sidebar by Gannett's DC reporter calling Thompson a "lazy" senator based on a second-hand assertion by liberal journalist David Corn and one lobbyist, Hilary Rosen, who's history of campaign contributions leans - heavily - to the Democratic side.

In 1994, Rosen donated to Thompson's Senate campaign opponent.  From 1985 through now, Rosen has given roughly a quarter of a million dollars to Democratic candidates and liberal special interest groups, but only $14,050 to Republican candidates. Last year Rosen gave $5,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

And this year Rosen has already maxed out to Hillary Rodham Clinton's primary campaign - she is hardly a objective source for an accurate characterization of a Republican candidate with the potential to thwart Hillary Clinton's White House ambitions, though Gannett News Service doesn't bother to inform readers of Rosen's liberal leanings and campaign contributions that would allow readers to better judge the credibility of her description of Thompson.

It's pretty clear early on that the Left has chosen "lazy" as a tag they're going to try to hang on Thompson - and that Gannett News Service is too lazy to do more than repeat the Left's talking point.

You can read part one of the three-part Thompson profile here.

Also, Marc Ambinder at the National Journal reviewed Thompson's speech to the Lincoln Club of Orange County, California, Friday night. You can watch Fred's speech on YouTube, where it is posted in four parts:

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4