Friday, January 04, 2008

FRED THOMPSON

The Post-Iowa Thinking at Team Thompson

One of the Thompson Associates checks in: 

Depending on the polling (and how much you take it seriously given the results we’ve seen), Fred gained between 4 and 10 points over the past two weeks.  That’s not bad for a guy given up for dead and relegated to third tier coverage by Fox News (Campaign Carl, where are you?  We miss you!) and others. 
 
Fred has always looked to Iowa as the first in a series.  By the end of this first cycle, he was hitting on all cylinders by all accounts.  You’re going to see that same candidate in New Hampshire and in South Carolina (where, by the way, we have, in my opinion, a strong operation).
 
In my view, playing off Fred’s line, there were four tickets out of Iowa, but only one of them for a conservative.  Fred has that ticket, and he’s going to punch the daylights out of it.   
 
I would dispute Mike Allen’s insistence that we are “broke.”  We are not broke.  Money is being raised and we have the wherewithal to do what needs to be done in South Carolina.
 
I think the internals we were seeing early on (with more recent deciders cutting to Huckabee and Fred) is bad news for Romney and Giuliani, because it would indicate that as people become engaged in the process, they are seeing where the candidates are standing and going conservative.   This by the way, if you want to be counterintuitive and stretch credulity a bit, might also be bad news for Huckabee down South.  He is probably the least known of the candidates.  He may have the twang, but he doesn’t have the record or policies to back it up.  A Southern conservative supporting Huckabee is akin to a son of the South going into McDonalds, buying a McRib sandwich and thinking he’s eating real barbeque.

My only note of skepticism in this thinking is that there's not just New Hampshire before South Carolina, but Michigan as well. Thompson has gone to a midwestern state of Iowa and did, meh, okay I guess. He won't do well in New Hampshire, and might be in asterisk territory, as Suffolk and Zogby have him at 2 percent. There isn't a ton of polling on Michigan, but what there is doesn't have Thompson making much of a splash. So it may be a long stretch before Thompson is back on friendly territory in South Carolina.

But the potential secret weapon? Wyoming, this Saturday. The Thompson Associate tells me, "Fred has actually spent time there.  And don’t forget Liz Cheney is working with us."

01/04 09:26 AMShare