Oh-eight (R): The Fred reviews are in
Posted: Monday, September 10, 2007 9:08 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
Republicans
GIULIANI: Over the weekend,
Gail Collins gave the Giuliani camp a taste of the negative type of coverage it could get this 9/11 anniversary week.
NBC's Chuck Todd took a look at the implications for Giuliani on the potential Bush appointment of Ted Olsen as attorney general.
Giuliani's comment that illegal immigration is not a crime -- but a misdemeanor -- got lots of Drudge play. Will it hurt with the GOP grass roots? Romney and Thompson hope so.
Giuliani told a Florida public affairs program that he opposed efforts to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998. "I didn't think ultimately Bill Clinton should have been impeached," Giuliani told Political Connections, a Bay News 9 program taped Friday. But Giuliani did criticize the Clinton administration for "gutting our military," saying it was the former president's "biggest mistake."
A huge Yankees fan, Giuliani threw out the first pitch at a Rangers-A’s game on Saturday. “Wearing a long-sleeved dress shirt and tie,” he “took about 25 swings in the batting cage with Rangers first baseman Brad Wilkerson's bat.” But note that he also took an implicit shot at Thompson in this quote to the AP: “It should be an important objective. It is not just symbolic,” Giuliani said of catching bin Laden. "The mere fact that he's still there inspires some of our enemies."
MCCAIN: McCain will be in
New Hampshire on Thursday and Friday at a slew of VFW halls. Interesting timing -- before and after Bush is planning to speak primetime on Iraq.
ROMNEY: The
New York Times examined Romney's change of heart on gay rights -- from his days as Massachusetts politician to conservative presidential candidate.
THOMPSON: NBC/NJ campaign reporter Adam Aigner-Treworgy reports that Thompson will bring his campaign kickoff tour today to South Carolina. He will begin by addressing a group of voters at the Greenville Marriott before traveling to a meet and greet at Doc's Barbeque & Southern Buffet in Columbia. Monday's events come on the heels of the most recent USA Today / Gallup Poll in which Thompson received a modest bump after officially entering the race last Thursday. Giuliani led the field of Republican candidates as he has all year with 34% but Thompson gained three points to come in second with 22%.
The Sunday New York Times: “A little over three years after Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, Fred D. Thompson provided advice to a colleague about one of his law firm’s new clients: The man representing the two Libyan intelligence officials charged in the terrorist bombing.”
More from the article: “Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for his presidential campaign, said that Mr. Thompson had no authority to decide which clients the firm represented. Mr. Thompson has faced questions about his work for two other Arent Fox clients. He initially denied working on behalf of a family planning group seeking to overturn an abortion counseling ban at federally financed clinics, but billing records showed that he spent nearly 20 hours on the matter. His work on behalf of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the deposed Haitian leader -- a phone call to John Sununu, then the White House Chief of Staff -- has also become fodder for his rivals because of human-rights abuses during Mr. Aristide’s presidency.”
Thompson seemed to get a decent reception in New Hampshire. He “spoke to party activists at a chili fest in Stratham on Saturday, shook hands at sports bars in Manchester during the Patriots game yesterday, and touted his background as a U.S. attorney and senator at an afternoon rally at Nashua City Hall, where President John F. Kennedy announced his candidacy in 1960.
The Union Leader: “He even signed a magazine that featured Thompson on its cover with the headline, ‘Lazy Like a Fox.’ ‘I'm going to lose more weight on this thing. I'll never get close enough to food to eat it,’ he joked with the throng of reporters and photographers chasing him.”
Thompson got the MoDo treatment, and it's not pretty. "Fred is not Ronnie; he’s warmed-over W. President Reagan always knew who the foe was."
Is the Thompson campaign writing off Iowa and New Hampshire? " ‘We're starting out with relatively low expectations’ in the early caucus and primary battlegrounds of Iowa and New Hampshire,” campaign manager Bill Lacy told the New York Daily News on Sunday. “His team is banking on the later primaries and a sweep of southern and heartland states to overcome the strength of Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Romney in big-city and rust-belt states.”
And is Thompson’s support already beginning to erode? “Prominent evangelical leaders who spent the summer hoping Fred Thompson would emerge as their favored Republican presidential contender are having doubts as he begins his long-teased campaign,” the AP reports.
