What To Expect From Fred Thompson This Week

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

FRED THOMPSON

The jabs at Thompson over his appearance on The Tonight Show the night of the debate, and the comments by Mary Matalin, are about a lot more than just Fred Thompson.

Iowa and New Hampshire get more attention from presidential candidates than any other state, and various other states are determined to see their reign end. Thus, various candidates are becoming stand-ins for battle between the traditional early-states and the challenging early states.

One Thompson associate noted that ‘you have two candidates, two frontrunners, whose game plan doesn’t involve winning Iowa… We want to perform well in Iowa, perform well in New Hampshire, win South Carolina, win Florida, and sweep the South.”

The Thompson associate offers his guess at the Rudy strategy: “Perform well in Iowa, win New Hampshire, win Florida, win New Jersey, and do well in the big states. Neither one’s plan relies on winning Iowa.”

If you’re an Iowan or New Hampshire political guru, you’re hell-bent on seeing your state remain in its position of decisive power. While neither is conceding the state, Thompson, and arguably Giuliani as well, threaten to demonstrate that your state is ultimately not that important in the nomination process, particularly in an accelerated primary schedule. (Of course, both states have a history of the winner not going on to win the overall primary – McCain 2000, Buchanan 1996, Harkin and Tsongas 1992…)

In the end, other opportunities to reach broader audiences elsewhere might provide as much bang-for-the-buck as another day spent shaking hands at a Nashua diner.

For example, a Thompson associate tells me that in June, when Fred Thompson appeared on The Tonight Show and with Sean Hannity, the 24-hour period after his appearance was among his best fundraising periods. If you were a candidate, would you rather stand on a New Hampshire stage alongside Tom Tancredo and Sam Brownback, and wait for your minute and a half to answer a question about health care reform, or is it better to lay out your vision one-on-one, before a relatively apolitical and otherwise hard-to-reach audience of 5.4 million with Jay Leno?

This Thompson associate notes that his name recognition is still below the other candidates. Gallup finds only 56 percent of Republicans feel they’re familiar with Thompson. In the next week we’re going to see an introductory campaign — a lot of his personal history and the broad themes. If you’ve been paying attention to his speeches, it’s probably not going to be new to you. (“He’s not going to suddenly go soft on entitlements,” I was told. “And anyone who's upset that he hasn't laid out his health-care plan by Saturday is an idiot.”) The Thompson almost-a-campaign has calculated that most primary voters haven’t really been paying attention for the past six months, and that they're just tuning in now, ready for a perfectly timed introduction to their man.

“We think we’ve got the best communicator in the field,” the associate says. “We’re going to know whether that’s true really soon.”

UPDATE: By the way, Minnesota Republicans held a straw poll at their state fair:

Votes Cast: 6,056

FDT: 1,989 (32.84%)
Giuliani: 1,272 (21.00%)
Romney: 876 (14.46%)
McCain: 500 (8.26%)
Paul: 452 (7.46%)
Huckabee: 376 (6.21%)

That seems like a pretty respectable total, seeing how there were 14,000 votes in the much-more highly publicized Iowa straw poll. For comparison:

Mitt Romney: 4,516 votes
Mike Huckabee: 2,587 votes
Sam Brownback: 2,192 votes
Tom Tancredo: 1,961 votes
Ron Paul: 1,305 votes

09/04 10:46 AM Share