Fred Thompson Campaign Bleeding Staffers

Cross posted from NewsMax.com

Fred Thompson Campaign Bleeding Staffers

By: Ronald Kessler

Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign continues to have more departures than a Greyhound bus terminal.

Departures: Jim Mills, J. T. Mastranadi, Nelson Warfield, Mark Corallo

Thompson personally hired Jim Mills, a highly respected Fox News producer, as his press spokesman. Two weeks later, after Thompson hired William Lacy as his campaign manager, Thompson fired Mills.

Mills gave up a hefty paycheck at Fox to join the Thompson campaign. He told friends he considered Thompson essential to the future of America. His firing outraged colleagues at Fox. Because Mills joined a campaign, his chances of being re-hired are diminished. He is still looking for a job.

J. T. Mastranadi, Thompson’s director of research, quit in horror after Thompson's wife Jeri began taking attendance at campaign headquarters in McLean, Va., one late Friday afternoon. Jeri Thompson actually called staffers at home to ask where they were and why they should be paid.

"The younger ones thought they were going to lose their jobs,” a former staffer said. "The more established ones were offended and asked themselves, why do I need this? One asked if Jeri would be calling him at 1 a.m. to check up on him when he was doing campaign work."

Despite that incident, Jeri, formerly with the Republican National Committee and Senate Republican Conference, is highly respected in Republican political circles.

"Message-wise, Jeri is great," said a former staffer. "She understands him and how he is best presented. She is a very bright and a good political thinker."

However, this week, Nelson Warfield, Thompson's media consultant, left in disgust as well, Top advisor Mark Corallo quit previously.

Warfield was offended by Mills' firing, Jeri Thompson's meddling, and Thompson's "lazy" approach to campaigning, according to one former staffer. Corallo left out of loyalty to Mills and dismay over what he considered Thompson's mismanagement of the campaign.

Asked for comment, Thompson advisor Mary Matalin called a story about the departures "a very old item" that "very much mischaracterizes the campaign effort."

She said Lacy was hired "to pull together a first class professional operation commensurate with the task at hand, namely, getting the best conservative elected, which is the only way to unite the party, which is the only path to beating the liberals next fall."

Matalin said Lacy "has in fact accomplished his mandate above and beyond what anyone thought possible after the other money throwing campaigns vacuumed through the political community." Lacy "is doing far more with are fewer and less paid staff who are all there because they believe in Fred," Matalin said.

Many staffers who have quit or were fired felt Thompson misled them about the energy he would put into the campaign. While Thompson shows up at fund raisers, he leaves quickly and doesn't spend much time making calls to raise money.

"That's just distasteful to him, or else he's busy doing other things," a former staffer said.

Early on, Thompson told campaign aides he was not going to be frenetic. As they understood it, that meant he would not pop in and out of states. Instead, he would spend three or four days in a state like Iowa, for example.

"We thought he would be going from town to town, spending two hours at a time and talking to people," a former staffer said. "Instead, he gets out of a bus and wears a baseball hat. The reporters laugh about it," he said.

Often, Thompson attends a few events a week.

"Instead of an all-out campaign, it seemed he thought of campaigning as a break from the rest of his life, which entailed hanging out at home with his wife," a former staffer said. Meanwhile, he noted, campaign aides are expected to work around-the-clock.

If Hillary Clinton is the candidate and Thompson is matched against her, the former staffer predicted a Republican disaster.

"Hillary is tireless," he said. "She doesn't take anything for granted. Nor do the rest of the candidates on the Republican side."

Technorati Tags:fred thompson, jim mills, j. t. mastranadi, nelson warfield, mark corallo, jeri thompson, mary matalin
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Posted by James Foley at 11:09 PM EDT
Edited on: Monday, October 29, 2007 11:34 AM EDT
Categories: 2008 election info, Cross Posts (Yahoo, VDare, etc.), The Fooled by Fred Factor


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Fred is talking tough on immigration

Cross posted from Vdare.com

Fred Thompson Talks Tough?

by Randall Burns

Fred Thompson has been trying to gain some momentum in the presidential campaign by talking tough on the topic of immigration. Basically he's offering to tighten up immigration enforcement-and even tighten chain migration a bit in return for expanded legal immigration (particularly in the areas catered to by programs like H-1b). This is all in line with his previous record. (Al Gore's immigration rating as a Senator from Tennessee was better than Thompson's.)What has changed mainly is he's trying to make it sound better to the folks that like Ron Paul or Tom Tancredo.

The basic problem is that Thompson's policies are nowhere near the level of enforcement you need to handle a situation where the profits from illegal immigration are huge for employers. Thompson's policies would barely dent the lowering of US wages and job quality associated with recent immigration policies (and might not even do that if legal immigration were expanded enough). Thompson also doesn't handle the potential for increased US immigration enforcement to destabilize Mexico–which has become rather dependent on remittances.

I'm glad to see that Thompson is at least paying attention to the immigration issue–but a lot more work is needed before there will be something on the table the bulk of Americans would recognize as a solution.

Fred is talking the talk of a true conservative, of a conservative's concern for citizens and how they are impacted by illegal immigration. He still believes in mass immigration and wants to get whole new classes of green cards for huge numbers of immigrants.He wants to convert the numbers crossing the border to legal immigrants with no restrictions on numbers.

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Posted by James Foley at 10:34 PM EDT
Edited on: Sunday, November 04, 2007 12:32 AM EDT
Categories: 2008 election info, Cross Posts (Yahoo, VDare, etc.), Talking the talk, The Fooled by Fred Factor


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Fred Sawyer and Huckabee Finn

Here is a cross post as Annie serves it up HOT on two of our conswervative candidates for the Republican nomination. I've said it before: Fred Thompson is not the Reagan Conservative that the conservative base is praying for. Fred is a McCain/Feingold conservative. He was a co-sponsor of that attack on our rights to free speech. This is the "Fooled By Fred Factor".

Huckabee is a conservative pretender wannabe, a phoney. He is a panderer that takes a back seat to no one. A pandering politician only listens to citizens if it doesn't get in the way of his true constituency, illegal aliens. A politician that runs as a conservative will run on conservative programs and principles. A conservative will be attentive to the citizens. Huckabee makes conservative noises and panders to non-citizens.

cross posted from: Human Events

Fred Sawyer and Huckabee Finn

by Ann Coulter - Posted: 10/10/2007

Conservatives unhappy with our Republican presidential candidates seem to be drifting aimlessly toward Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee in the misguided belief that these candidates are more conservative than Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. This is like breaking up with Bobby Brown so you can date Phil Spector.

Huckabee Finn

On illegal immigration, Huckabee makes George Bush sound like Tom Tancredo. He has compared illegal aliens to slaves brought here in chains from Africa, saying, "I think frankly the Lord is giving us a second chance to do better than we did before."

Toward that end, when an Arkansas legislator introduced a bill that would prevent illegal aliens from voting and receiving state benefits, Huckabee denounced the bill, saying it would rile up "those who are racist and bigots."

He also made the insane point that companies like Toyota would not invest in Arkansas if the state didn't allow non-citizens to vote because it would "send the message that, essentially, 'If you don't look like us, talk like us and speak like us, we don't want you.'"

Like all the (other) Democratic candidates for president, he supports a federal law to ban smoking -- unless you're an illegal alien smoking at a Toyota plant. (I just realized why Mike Huckabee can't run for president as a Democrat -- they've already got Mike Gravel.)

Huckabee also joined with impeached president Bill Clinton in a campaign against childhood obesity. What, O.J. wasn't available?

Bill and Mike's excellent adventure lasted about one week in May 2005 -- or just long enough to burnish the image of the president who committed perjury and obstruction of justice in a civil rights suit against him, molested the help and was credibly accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick.

Huckabee teamed up with that guy to talk to children about healthy eating habits. Ironically, the obesity campaign kicked off almost exactly nine years from the very Palm Sunday on which President Clinton used a cigar as a sexual aid on Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office.

What is with Republicans? Clinton isn't your average ex-president, like Jerry Ford. This isn't even Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale.

Decent people shun Clinton, but elected Republicans keep trying to rehabilitate him. President Bush sends his own father on a feel-good "tsunami-relief campaign" with this guy, and Huckabee visits schoolchildren with him.

Fred Sawyer

In 1999, Sen. Fred Thompson joined legal giants like Sens. Jim Jeffords, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to vote against removing Bill Clinton from office for perjury.

Thompson, whom President Nixon once called "dumb as hell," claimed to have carefully studied the Constitution and determined that perjury by the president of the United States did not constitute "high crimes and misdemeanors." He must have been looking at one of those living, breathing Constitutions we've heard so much about.

When the framers chose the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" for the Constitution, they were using a term taken from British parliamentary impeachments. There's a 600-year history of what this phrase means -- and Clinton met it about a dozen times before he gave a single statement under oath or suborned a single witness's testimony.

It has been used in this country and in Britain to remove one government official for making "uncivil addresses to a women," another for "notorious excesses and debaucheries" and another for "frequenting bawdy houses and consorting with harlots." Or, as Bill Clinton used to call it, "a three-day weekend."

The House didn't even impeach Clinton for his legion of "notorious excesses and debaucheries." He was impeached for excesses that also happen to be felonies. For a nation of laws, there are no more serious offenses than perjury and obstruction of justice.

The entire Supreme Court -- including the justices Clinton appointed -- boycotted Clinton's State of the Union address after his impeachment trial. That's what they thought of crimes that attack the legal system.

Rep. James Rogan lost his congressional seat because he stuck by his principles as a manager of Clinton's impeachment. Lifelong Democrat David Schippers abandoned his party's lockstep defense of Clinton to pursue Clinton's impeachment as the House Judiciary Committee's chief counsel. Rep. Henry Hyde saw an affair he had in 1965 become front-page news because he wouldn't waver from doing his job under the Constitution.

But, as The New York Times recently said, Thompson "agonized over what he saw as two 'bad choices.'"

What bad choices? Punishing a multiple felon or not punishing him? This wasn't exactly a job for King Solomon, pal.

The Times reported that calls from Thompson's Tennessee constituents showed that they "overwhelmingly favored removing President Bill Clinton from office."

So Thompson could either:

• (1) Follow the Constitution and make his constituents happy or,

• (2) disregard the Constitution and make his Hollywood friends happy.

Only a handful of Republicans voted against all law and reason to keep Clinton in office, and only one of them was from Tennessee.

This isn't the time to be toying with any Republican who had a Clinton in his sights and ended up shooting himself in the foot.

If you're bored with our top candidates, go see a slasher movie. Don't take it out on a presidential election.

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Posted by James Foley at 10:08 PM EDT
Edited on: Thursday, October 25, 2007 12:12 PM EDT
Categories: 2008 election info, Blogs, Forums, and The Media, Cross Posts (Yahoo, VDare, etc.), The Fooled by Fred Factor


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Fred '08 on immigration

Here is immigration information directly transcribed from the Fred '08 - Friends of Fred web page.

Immigration

The United States is a nation of immigrants. Throughout our history, legal immigrants have brought energy, ideas, strength, and diversity to our country, our economy, and our culture. This must continue. But in the post-9/11 world, immigration is more of a national security issue. A government that cannot secure its borders and determine who may enter and who may not, abrogates a fundamental responsibility. I am committed to:

• Securing our borders and enforcing immigration laws. Amnesty is not an option and the toleration of “sanctuary cities” must end.

• Reviewing our immigration laws and policies to ensure they advance our national interests.

• Uniting Americans by welcoming legal immigrants willing to learn English, assimilate into our communities, and become productive citizens.

Question: Why does a candidate surround himself with personnell that are pro-amnesty such as Spencer Abraham and a bunch of Bush campaign staffers, then come out with such carefully crafted statements?

Answer: Fred has a bunch of the Bush campaign staff that knows how to lie convincingly to the grass roots. We desperately want to believe that Fred is the conservative savior of the GOP. That is how he is being packaged. We do not need another stealth amnesty advocate.

Look at the second bullet above: Reviewing our immigration laws to ensure they advance our national interests. Here is the heart of his weasel words. Over the last two years we have had a bunch of quisling traitors of both parties, from the top down, try to give away citizenship to tens of millions if not eventually hundreds of millions of illegal aliens. How? First by not enforcing existing laws and by trying to dilute or totally eliminate anything that looks like it might restrict uncontrolled immigration. That is the review they seek. Tell me I am wrong, Fred! In clearer language! We already have heard from Bush and McCain that amnesty is not an option but we have also seen the bald faced attempts at foisting it on us too!

We need to tightly control immigration from identified regions and countries with terrorist ties. Currently we are giving them preferred nation status for refugees.

Immigration is listed seven items down from National Security as if it is a seperate issue. The budget, tax reform, health care, and government effectiveness are given more weight on your page than is the open (and in some cases hostile) occupation of the USA by a foreign power. In todays world reality, immigration, legal and otherwise, is part and parcel of national security. Border security is directly tied to national security but you try to treat it as if it is of much lesser importance. Or one of your campaign staff that composed the web page thought so!

If Fred becomes the nominee for the Republican party, I want everyone to be aware of what he stands for.

Do I trust Fred?

HELL NO!

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Posted by James Foley at 11:23 AM EDT
Edited on: Sunday, September 30, 2007 8:27 PM EDT
Categories: 2008 election info, Random Thoughts and Comments, The Fooled by Fred Factor


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Why wont Fred say...

...what he thinks about dealing with the millions of illegals occupying America? He says things about border security but not what to do with the occupying hoard.

Is it because he intends to hold a replay of the misquided Reagan amnesty and doesnt want to tip us off? This is the sort of info that could scuttle a candidacy.

Fred Thompson is a close friend, associate, and contemporary of the well documented current day amnesty panderers who support him (with the exception of the few who are also seeking the nomination).

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Posted by James Foley at 7:48 AM EDT
Edited on: Wednesday, September 19, 2007 7:54 AM EDT
Categories: Random Thoughts and Comments, The Fooled by Fred Factor


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The Fred Factor, Talking the Talk

Can Fred "Talk the Talk and Walk the Walk" of the conservative savior of the party? First, he needs to give us a No Bullshit explanation of his stand on illegal aliens!

Ask yourself, "Why would a candidate surround him/herself with staffers known for positions of open borders/amnesty, if the candidate didn't hold those same opinions?"

I see hundreds of hits in my server log looking for my Fred4Prez wanted poster... I have pulled it until Fred makes chrystal clear his positions on the border, immigration, and the disposition of millions of invaders in occupied America. If he is indeed of the camp supporting some form of amnesty (allowing illegals to stay and eventually apply for citizenship) then he will never get a nod from me. His campaign staff composition appears to be of the amnesty appeaser slant... he has Bush staffers to spin his position, and he brought in Spencer Abraham, a noted proponent of open borders and amnesty. The Bushie powered spin machine will make him sound like a tough border type and say that he is against amnesty just like Bush and McCain.

Until he says in clear unambiguous words his position against illegals, Fred will not get support from me! Nothing else he stands for will be worth a damn if he is all for giving it away to an invasion force from the south. Our current president is already doing this. We can nor stand another 4 years of this policy.

Technorati Tags:fred factor, thompson, spencer abraham, amnesty, occupied america, invasion force
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Posted by James Foley at 10:48 PM EDT
Edited on: Monday, September 10, 2007 7:11 AM EDT
Categories: 2008 election info, Random Thoughts and Comments, Talking the talk, The Fooled by Fred Factor, Walking the walk


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Defenders of Thompson Just Like Defenders of Bush - Guest Editorial

[Received via email.]

Defenders of Thompson Just Like Defenders of Bush

by Richard A. Viguerie

www.ConservativesBetrayed.com

The defenders of Fred Thompson’s troubling record have not attempted to explain, mitigate, or refute any of the concerns expressed in my article, “Conservatives, Beware of Fred Thompson.”

Rather, they’ve attacked the messenger.

That’s exactly what President Bush’s political appointees--Peter Wehner and William McClay--did in response to my article in the Washington Post, “Bush’s Base Betrayal” and my book, Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause (Bonus Books, 2006).

That’s an additional warning sign that Thompson may be a lot like Bush. Remember when Bush was running, a lot of good people thought he was a conservative.

Boy, were they taken in! [ed: I was taken in by the Compassionate Conservative label that someone cooked up.]

We’ve got to make sure we don’t go down that road again--not with Thompson or anyone else.

With Thompson, there are some definite warning signs. He was not actively pushing conservative legislation when he was in the Senate. The only issue he displayed any leadership on was--are you ready?--the McCain-Feingold Bill, which he cosponsored. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) said the bill could not have been passed without Thompson’s tremendous help.

In defending his support of this horrible legislation, Thompson has said he did not realize how the law would actually work.

Really? How exactly did he think it would work?

The Los Angeles Times discovered that, before Thompson was elected to the Senate, he had been a lobbyist for an abortions right group. Thompson denied it. Then, the New York Times located the billing records, thereby providing “the smoking gun.” This raises significant questions about either Thompson’s honesty or his mental abilities to recall significant information.

Sure, people change their mind on issues, including abortion. We welcome converts to the pro-life side. Thompson could have said, “I regret being a lobbyist for the abortion industry. But because I was once in a leadership position in support of abortion, I’m better able now to combat that point of view.”

Instead, he demonstrated that, at best, he might need medical attention to correct serious lapses in memory. I don’t know anyone who could forget about doing 20 hours of work for a pro-abortion group. At worst, Thompson may have gotten caught trying to “pull the wool over our eyes.”

The Washington Post’s investigation found that, before his election, Thompson worked as a lawyer who argued against the government’s authority to regulate drug paraphernalia. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled against Thompson.

In another case, Thompson tried to challenge U.S. Customs’ right to search a boat on which 28,000 pounds of marijuana was found. Fortunately, the U.S. Court of Appeals disagreed.

In addition to his work as a criminal lawyer, Thompson has filed a lot of civil suits. As a result, the political action committee of the plaintiff lawyers gave him the maximum $10,000 donation to each of his two Senate campaigns.

The Post reported, “Thompson defied Republican orthodoxy almost as soon as he arrived in Washington in 1995 as a freshman senator.”

To be fair, Thompson’s lifetime voting record in the Senate from the American Conservative Union was 86.1%. That’s not too bad. But it’s not as good as a lot of Republican senators, especially those from “red states.”

Conservatives need to take a good look at all of the candidates. We need to ask hard questions. If there’s a problem, we need to find out about it now, not later.

By raising issues of concern to conservatives, the campaigns can be forced to address our issues, rather than playing defense on the liberals’ terrain.

Obviously, Thompson would like to capitalize on his television persona as far as it can take him without having to take specific stands on tough issues. The truth is he’s no different from a lot of other candidates who’d like conservative support without firmly committing to conservative positions.

I’m going to do my best to see that doesn’t happen.

I hope conservatives will not be “climbing on board” the Thompson bandwagon or anyone else’s bandwagon without getting good answers to our questions and concerns.

Thompson can use the questions that have been raised about his record to try to establish a real bond with grassroots conservatives. If he does, he can win the nomination and the election. But if he comes across as a Bush-type Big Government Republican, I can tell you how this movie will end.

Technorati Tags: viguerie, thompson, bush, mccain, large government republicans, country club republicans
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Posted by James Foley at 12:09 AM EDT
Edited on: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 6:40 AM EDT
Categories: Compassionate Conservatives (aka Wobbly Moderates), Guest Editorial, The Fooled by Fred Factor


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Fred, you had me totally fooled!

Fred, you had me totally fooled!

[...because I was wishing so hard that you are the Reagan Clone we have been looking for! It may be true that there is only One Ron Reagan. He was a product of HIS generation from WW!!. He served in the military as did most men of that era.]

I decided to grab the bull by the horns. We can not afford another Bush "Large Business" clone for another 4 years in the White House.

From RenewAmerica.us comes this information:

===

Clear indications Bush insiders are behind the 'I'm with Fred' movement:

* Fred Thompson shakes up pre-launch campaign Though he has not yet even declared he is running for president, Fred Thompson shook up his team Tuesday amid fears he was losing momentum and needed an injection of talent . . . [Click for more]

* Fred Thompson's presidential campaign staff

Thomas Collamore

Role: campaign manager.

Background: vice president for corporate public affairs, Altria Group. Official in U.S. Commerce Department under former President George H.W. Bush and aide to Bush when he was vice president . . . [Click for more]

* Key Bush backers rally to Fred Thompson

George P. Bush, a nephew of President Bush, has contributed to the prospective presidential campaign of Fred Thompson and signed an e-mail asking friends and associates to do the same, The Politico has learned . . . [Click for more]

* Jihad Spence: Fred Thompson's Pan-Islamist campaign manager

He hasn't entered the Presidential race yet, but Fred Thompson, yesterday, showed us why he's the scariest Republican Presidential candidate. And maybe the scariest of both parties . . . [Click for more]

===

First he brings a pro-amnesty advisor on board, Spencer Abraham, and now this video surfaces on YouTube [see below].

Fred certainly looks like he has been carefully groomed to appear as a conservative Reagan replacement... that is falling apart!

We do NOT need another candidate who will give us another amnesty like the last one complete with laws that will never be enforced.

Take a look at this video: