Possible Thompson Candidacy Intrigues GOP

Will Tennessean Get Into the 2008 Race?

One of Fred Thompson's oldest political friends from Tennessee said that the former Volunteer State senator and movie and television star is "at this time, a four or five on a scale of 10" to seek the Republican nomination for President next year.

Tom Griscom, editor and publisher of the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times-Free Press, told me last Thursday that "I haven't reached out to Fred yet, but I'm going purely on instinct" on guessing where the 64-year-old Thompson is in considering a White House bid. Griscom added that he would contact the mentor he and Thompson shared, former Senate Republican Leader Howard Baker (R.-Tenn.), before calling Thompson to discuss a presidential race. Griscorn served as press secretary to Baker and came to know Thompson in 1973, when Thompson became minority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee on which Baker was ranking Republican.

"It's late in the game and, at least in terms of raising money, Fred may not have the luxury of time," observed Griscom, who served as operating head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 1986 and later director of communications in the Reagan White House He also conceded that Thompson has been out of office since he left the Senate in 2002. ("He really didn't like the way the Senate worked.") But he added that Thompson-best known these days as "District Attorney Arthur Branch" on NBC's popular "Law & Order" serieshas kept himself politically active as the White House point man on the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts and, more recently, through the legal defense fund for Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the recently convicted former top aide to Vice President Cheney.

When I asked him whether Thompson is a conservative, Griscom told me: "Look, a lot of people call him a centrist because his introduction to politics was via Howard Baker. He's actually a lot more conservative than people realize. Fred's not an extremist-he'd never be part of the religious right, but he's certainly more conservative than Howard Baker." With a lifetime rating of 86% from the American Conservative Union over his eight years in the Senate (1994-2002), Thompson's record in the Senate, with few exceptions, was rather solidly conservative. His breaks from the right were almost all related to campaign finance reform issues and to tort reform. (He practiced law before entering politics.) In '02, for example, as a strong supporter of McCain-Feingold. he broke with most conservative senators to support limiting donations to federal candidates to $2.000 per year and opposed a measure to require medical malpractice suits against doctors and medical providers to be filed within two years of discovering an injury. In Ol, Thompson voted for three measures to enhance government regulation of campaign finance and, in a rare break with fiscal conservatives on taxes, he opposed an accelerated elimination of the marriage penalty. His overall record on fiscal issues, however, is conservative. In '02, the National Taxpayers Union rated Thompson 73%, making him the 7th best senator in the NTU ratings of lawmakers on spending issues.

Griscom quickly referred to the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington and said "no one [of the candidates who participated in the conference] can make the claim of being the anointed conservative.

Among those closely advising Thompson on a prospective White House bid are Baker and Tennessee State Republican Chairman Bob Davis, who ran Thompson's state operations while he was in the Senate.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Mar 19, 2007
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