I Get Emails: Why Hasn’t Fred Dominated The Field?

17 Jan, 2008 by John Hawkins

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Here’s an email I received yesterday,

John,

I know this is not Q&A Friday but I’m hoping you can address a question I have. Every conservative I know — and everyone I know is a conservative — wants Fred Thompson as our candidate. No one is enthusiastic about the other options. I noticed the current Pajamas Media poll has Thompson at 67%.

Why can’t Thompson get any traction in the media? What the heck is going on? He’s our guy, conservative Republicans want him, but he never gets mentioned in the press. Ultimate question, I guess, is how can we all on the conservative side join voices to put a loud shout out that the clear choice on the right is Fred Thompson? Something that will get attention.

We’ll go down to defeat if it’s anybody but Thompson.

Adrian J. Murray

I think Fred Thompson’s campaign was heavily damaged by his late entry into the race for a number of reasons.

* Had he gotten in earlier, he would have raised a heck of a lot more money and had more time to campaign in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan.

* By the time he got in, a lot of the conservative media had already settled on other candidates and didn’t give him a fair shake.

* Because the hype got to such a high level and because Fred got in so late, he was under a microscope and when he, and his campaign, made some mistakes early on, just as the other campaigns did, it got enormous coverage. If he’d had the same unsteady start in July, it wouldn’t have made as much of a difference.

I also think that there is a lot of “winnerism” that plays into it. You have people who put backing a winning candidate ahead of backing a conservative candidate and with Republicans having trouble nationally, a lot of people feel, falsely I think, that we have to settle for a moderate candidate.

Also, keep in mind that in 1976, Republicans looked at a moderate mediocrity like Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, the most charismatic, conservative leader the GOP had in the last century, and they chose Gerald Ford. So. the best man does not always win.

PS: Fred isn’t out of it yet. Cross your fingers and hope he does well in South Carolina.