Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

The Washington Post profiles the politics of Fred Thompson, and asserts that, "the man some in the GOP are touting as a dream candidate has often sounded like the presidential hopeful many of them seem ready to dismiss: Sen. John McCain." There's not much "new" in the article, though in at least two places the WaPo badly mischaracterizes Thompson. First, a few graphs from the story...

Fred Thompson fervently backed the Iraq war, railed against an expanding federal government, took stands that occasionally annoyed his party and rarely spoke about his views on social issues during his tenure as a senator from Tennessee or in his writings and speeches since leaving office. In short, the man some in the GOP are touting as a dream candidate has often sounded like the presidential hopeful many of them seem ready to dismiss: Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).

With some in the party clamoring for an alternative to their current field of presidential contenders and Thompson's allies hinting strongly that he will run, 400 conservatives flocked to Newport Beach, Calif., on Friday night to hear the actor-turned-politician-turned-actor address the annual dinner of the Lincoln Club of Orange County, a group that credits itself with pushing Ronald Reagan to run for governor of California in the 1960s. Thompson delivered a vision of cutting taxes, reducing the size of government, overhauling Social Security and staying in Iraq until "there is some semblance of stability."

He also called for "reform-minded, change-minded leaders," a profile that McCain -- whom Thompson described as "a man of the highest integrity and courage" in 1999 when he co-chaired the Arizonan's presidential run -- has worked hard to lay claim to over the past decade. Thompson was one of only four GOP senators to back McCain's bid in 2000, and a former aide to the Tennessean said McCain "was far and away his best friend in the Senate."

Within the party, some argue that McCain is too unpredictable or too closely tied to President Bush's Iraq policy, others that former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and ex-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney are unreliable on core party issues or could not win a general election -- and such complaints have helped fuel the push for Thompson, who left the Senate in 2003 and returned to acting. He now plays District Attorney Arthur Branch on the NBC series "Law & Order."

With encouragement from top Republicans such as former Senate majority leaders Howard Baker and Bill Frist (both Tennesseans), Thompson is taking all the steps to ready for a presidential run, meeting with members of Congress, talking to former aides about how to organize a campaign and posting to conservative blogs.

The first way the WaPo gets it wrong is in recycling the charge that Thompson was "pro-choice" during his 1994 Senate campaign, based on a video clip from a campaign debate that year.

Although in the Senate Thompson voted for bills to ban late-term abortions and garnered high ratings from abortion opponents, he was not a leader on social issues. Operatives aligned with some of Thompson's would-be opponents are circulating a clip from a Senate debate in which Thompson said he did not support banning abortions.

"Should the government come in and criminalize, let's say, a young girl and her parents and her doctors as aiders and abettors? . . . I think not," Thompson said.

The WaPo mischaracterizes what Thompson said. Thompson said he didn't believe government should "criminalize" abortion. The WaPo says this means Thompson didn't support banning abortion. There is a vast difference between the two. You can be for banning abortion or limiting it via regulations - as Thompson expressly was during that debate - and be against criminalizing it and jailing abortionists and women who get abortions.

As I wrote on my own blog two weeks ago:

That sentence is the summary of all he says next, and shows he is opposed to Roe v. Wade, which represented the federalization of what had been a state-level issue.

He then says he is opposed to federal funding for abortion and supports the states' right to regulate abortion - both are federalist and pro-life positions - and he opposes the federal government criminalizing abortion. Again, a federalist answer.

Thompson's entire answer is a very "federalist" - he believes abortion policy should be a matter for states rather than the federal government. His answer also fits within the mainstream pro-life platform. Most pro-lifers do not favor making criminals of women who have abortions, and the pro-life push to overturn Roe v. Wade would merely return the issue of abortion to a state-level issue. And, finally, Thompson's voting record in 8 years in the Senate is solidly pro-life.

The second thing that jumps out at me from the WaPo piece is that, while it initially tries to portray Thompson as a McCain clone, it later admits that he isn't, saying, "unlike McCain, [Thompson] did not seem to revel in challenging his party's leaders." And near the very end of the story the WaPo admits, "Thompson and McCain have some significant differences on policy."

Thompson isn't a McCain clone, and he wasn't "pro-choice" when he ran for the U.S. Senate in the 1990s. The WaPo got it wrong.