Claire Celsi, my counterpart over at Know More Media's The Demo Memo, has suggested a possible attack route for the Left against Fred Thompson. In a comment to a recent post here about Thompson, Celsi wrote:
After he left the Senate in 2003, Thompson resumed his acting career with a role as the district attorney on TV's Law & Order. Less visibly, he registered in 2004 as a lobbyist for Equitas, a company created to manage the asbestos liability for Lloyd's of London.
Equitas hired a bevy of lobbyists to protect its interests in the proposal to set up a federal trust fund, paid for by insurers, asbestos-makers and others, to compensate asbestos victims. The bill failed to pass, but before that happened, Equitas got what it wanted: a change in a provision the company said singled out foreign insurers for unfavorable treatment. Jon Nash, a firm spokesman, on Wednesday credited Thompson as having "contributed to the successful outcome."
The company paid Thompson $760,000 from 2004 to 2006, according to Senate records.
This will not look good to general election voters. Plus he has lymphoma...the "great white hope" of the republican party had some serious rotten spots.
Where to start? Okay. The asbestos story. Yes, true. Thompson - a lawyer - did some work to help ensure that the government treated foreign and domestic insurers the same. What is so bad about that? I thought Democrats believed in fair play and a level playing field and all that? Besides, I seriously doubt there are many Americans who will vote for a president in November 2008 based on the issue of asbestos.
Next, the lymphoma story. Let's get our facts more specific, shall we? Thompson has an "indolent" lymphoma that is in remission, he has not had one bad symptom of it ever, and it is an extremely slow-growing cancer which doctors say likely will not shorten his lifetime. And, oh, by the way, millions of Americans have cancer and they go on living their lives.
You might have heard of one of them, Claire. Her name is Elizabeth Edwards.
"Americans Livign With Cancer" is a huge number of voters - and even bigger when you count close relatives of people with cancer. They might not like hearing Democrats attack a candidate because he's a cancer survivor.
And, finally, the "great white hope" reference. Are we really going to see the Left use race to attack Thompson? I would hope not.
The fact is, the American people want a healthy president. Fred Thompson is damaged goods, plus he is too old.
Posted by: Claire Celsi | June 17, 2007 7:26 AM | Permalink to Comment