“For a guy who says he’s not running for political office,
former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson
sure is raising his public political profile lately.”
I wrote that brief post on my blog on January 20, 2007, two years to the day before the country witnesses the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. Looking back at it I claim prophetic inspiration, but the truth is it was probably one percent hunch and 99 percent hope.
My name is Bill Hobbs and I’m a blogger of political things in Tennessee. I write about taxes and the Tennessee state budget, about politics, and the war, and sometimes issues of faith and culture. Sometimes I post photos I’ve taken of old barns. That’s what we bloggers do - we blog about interesting things.
For much of the first half of 2007 I blogged about Fred Thompson, perhaps the biggest political icon Tennessee has produced since, well, since Andrew Jackson, and by far the most interesting story in Republican election politics.
Al Gore may be a “rock star” to the environmental Left, to the Hollywood eco-rati, and to sufferers of Bush Derangement Syndrome, but the globe-jetting global-warming guru isn’t Tennessee’s biggest political star. Neither is the state’s Democrat governor, a cold technocrat re-elected in 2006 with 70 percent of the vote. Nor, for that matter, is it Sen. Lamar Alexander, the much respected and popular former two-term governor remembered fondly for his red-plaid campaign shirt and his walks across Tennessee, though he’s likely to win re-election in ‘08 by a sizable margin.
They are all successful political figures whom Tennesseans like. But in the Volunteer State, Fred Thompson is beloved – and for the past several months it’s clear that his appeal in his home state is translating nationally.
That brief blog post I quoted above linked to a longer post at ElephantBiz.com, where I excerpted a commentary that Thompson, a lawyer, former U.S. senator and actor, delivered while guest-hosting radio’s famed Paul Harvey Show. I speculated that Thompson might be running an unconventional campaign to raise his profile in preparation for a possible White House bid.
The reaction was instant…
- From the introduction to the book “Who Is Fred Thompson? Tennessee Bloggers Debate the Candidate’s Conservative Credentials,” published September 2007 by New Pamphleteer Press. The book is available online for $4.
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