Fred: What would Reagan think?
Posted: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 12:09 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-TreworgyMT. PLEASANT, SC -- This morning
Thompson invoked the name of
Ronald Reagan at a retail stop here at Alex’s Diner, saying that many of his opponents are late comers to Reagan’s party and the former president must be sitting up in his grave, “looking down and shaking his head saying who are these fellows that are using my name so often in these debates.”
A day after rolling out a new proposal for how to handle illegal immigration, the former senator continued to criticize “sanctuary cities” and emphasize his plan to strip cities of federal funding if they refuse to comply with federal immigration laws.
Thompson also sharpened his criticisms of his fellow GOP candidates and his Democratic rivals. First, he pleaded with the mostly friendly audience at the diner to help him convince voters to vote Republican.
“Don’t turn the keys to this country over to a political party who wants to do nothing more than create a gigantic welfare state from the United States of America,” Thompson said. “Don’t turn this … country over to a party who insults our generals and plays politics with national security. Don’t do that.”
Then Thompson referred to a question asked at Sunday’s debate about his “bold” entitlement proposals.
“These are not always easy things politically to talk about,” Thompson said, “that’s why in the debate the other night I was the only one talking about them. [The moderators] would say, ‘What do you think about Thompson’s proposal,’ and [my opponents] would go in and say, ‘Yeah, it’s a real problem, we’ve got to do something about it. Now let’s talk about global warming for a while.’ They changed the subject…You can’t change the subject. Why run if you want to change the subject.”
As he often does, Thompson said that he refuses to “change the subject” during his campaign, because he’s got nothing to lose. “I think you need somebody that’s not afraid to tell the truth about what the situation is,” Thompson said. “If the American people say, ‘Well we don’t want to hear that,’ well all they can do is send me back to being the happiest man you ever met. I don’t have a political career to lose, because I never really had one to start with.”
