I could not agree more with Patrick’s excellent essay. Although not a paid staffer, I have been involved in the campaign from before the official exploratory effort was announced. Patrick correctly describes some of the effects of delaying a formal entry into the race. In my opinion there was another adverse consequence of delaying a formal declaration of candidacy that Patrick did not mention. It provided the media with a false, but persistent narative: Fred is not working hard and underperforming. If a declaration of candidacy had been made in July – prior to the filing of the July 15 IRS report for fundraising activity completed through June 30 – two things could have been accomplished and two things could have been avoided.
First, the campaign could have announced that its June fundraising had raised $3.5MM – $1.5MM more than the $2MM goal set for the “first day founders”. Instead, the AP falsely reported based on the July 15 IRS filing that the campaign had failed to meet a goal of $5MM and for a month afterward every newspaper story about the campaign from the NYT to the Nashville City Paper contained a paragraph repeating this falsehood.
Second, an early July announcement would have allowed the campaign to capitalize on unsollicited public support while the excitement about the campaign was in the ascending branch of its arc. This would have avoided yielding the floor to the television pundits who used the time to spread the equally flase critique of Fred as being “lazy” or “unserious”. The hard work of formulating policy positions, asembling staff and raising money does not provide good video for a chattering class obsessed with “horserace” stories focused on polling an electorate yet to be informed of a candidate’s policies and principles.
Fred Thompson was and is the GOP’s best hope for fielding a genuinely conservative candidate. The GOP establishment is not genuinely conservative – although I am convinced that the Party’s rank and file is. It is not too late for the Party to avoid catastrophe in November. The Democrats will eventually nominate Sen. Clinton and it will do so after a divisive bloodletting. Disaffection in the Democratic coalition and persistent opposition to the Clinton political machine could form a perfect storm on which a Republican ticket with conservative credibility may achieve the White House.
The key to Republican success is credibility with the Party’s conservative rank and file. The most credible conservative on the GOP’s national scene is Fred Thompson. Since the eventual nominee will be either John McCain or Mitt Romney – two men of whom conservatives are deeply skeptical -a conservative platform and a VP nominee conservatives can trust to defend conservative principles are essential elements of a winning strategy.
