Fred: Principled Leader

Peter Robinson at National Review's blog "The Corner" has written an interesting blog regarding Mitt and Fred. Basically it starts with a discussion about Reagan and how he had to do some things that he didn't want to do, but his principles were always clear.

He then talks about Mitt:

The reason I find Romney so flawed is precisely that he is so utterly unlike Reagan in this critical regard. [i.e. everyone knew where he stood.]
...
People who know Romney well—people such as Dean Barnett, with whom, as it happens, I just had a cup of coffee—tell me that the true Romney, the inner Romney, really is a Reagan Republican. Maybe. But I’d sure like to be able to do more than take Dean’s word for it. (Not, come to think of it, that his knowledge of the inner Romney has enabled Dean himself to view Romney’s conduct with equanimity. As Dean wrote this very week in the New York Times, Romney has “mounted a campaign that was, at its most basic level, insincere.”)

He had pointed out Mitt's recent pandering in Michigan which is inconsistent with his supposed conservative fiscal stance. Now he finishes with Fred. Note, Robinson had quoted a New Hampshire source that critiqued Fred on not having college liaisons or other "sophisticated" campaign machinery.

Fred Thompson? Could any candidate have proven more exasperating? Not until he began his bus tour of Iowa, a scant couple of weeks before the caucuses, did he even really begin to campaign. And not until the debate in Myrtle Beach last weekend, just a week before the South Carolina primary, did he really begin to fight, landing jabs on Huckabee and taking a swing at McCain. But could any candidate have proven more authentic? Thompson has done just what Reagan did. He has stated his principles. He has let voters in on his program. And when Fred Thompson says he intends to secure our borders, defeat the Islamofascists, cut taxes, reduce regulations, control spending, and defend the unborn, he’s not flipping or flopping. He’s demonstrating fundamental consistency with his entire record in public life. If he lacks college liaisons, direct mail experts, and other appurtenances so in evidence on the Romney campaign, so be it. Thompson isn’t relying on some giant, gleaming juggernaut to carry him along. Like the Gipper before him, he's standing on principle.