FDT Campaign Getting Bigger

The FDT campaign is adding leadership team members including George Allen, Liz Cheney, Spence Abraham in addition to Howard Baker. Apparently Allen's former advisers are already raising money for Fred's campaign.

Fred Inevitable?

The American Thinker has an article analyzing Fred and competitors on the Republican side of things. The conclusion is that Fred will be the Republican nominee and will win the Presidency despite the conventional wisdom's panning of Fred.

Watch a Thompson speech that was widely panned as dull. Just because Fred talks slowly doesn't mean he's stupid, or uninspiring. Notice that he is saying important things and saying them well. How many politicians can talk about Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind in terms which indicate that he has both read and understood it?

Consider that Fred's calm, sensible demeanor permits him to say things that would terrify many ordinary voters coming from someone who seemed less steady. Thompson can say radical things and nobody turns a hair. If any other candidate talked about overhauling social security and the tax code while we fight a global war of which Iraq and Afghanistan are mere outcroppings, a substantial part of the electorate would faint dead away. Try to wrap your mind around the reality that coming off like an old coot having a conversation as he whittles next to the pot-bellied stove down at the country store is an excellent way to attract most American voters.

Give it a read. It has good analysis of what differentiates Fred from Romney, McCain, Giuliani and Clinton.

Fred at Americans for Prosperity

Fred's speech at the Americans for Prosperity Summit has been You Tubed. Here they are. While the quality of the second is not good (sound is out of sync for the first few minutes), it has the best meat.

I loved the start of the the second video as he speaks of his "convoluted economic philosophy",

Let's keep doing the things that work and quit doing the things that don't work in this economy.

He goes on to specifically talk about the tax cuts. He also talked about Social Security and indexing increases to cost of living rather than average wage increases.

Fundraising Better Than Reported

It turns out that Fred actually raised $9.3 million in Q3 rather than the $8 million previously reported. It will be interesting to see how this shakes up some of the analysis. The FDT campaign has learned from the Q2 funding announcements that they have to do a good job of managing expectations. Actual announcements should be higher than estimated announcements.

Overall they have raised $12.7 million and still has $7 million cash on hand.

Giuliani raised about $10.5 million in Q3--so only a difference in about $1.2 million.

I will be very interested to see how Q4 turns out since it will be the first for Fred where he is a candidate for the entire period and when Newt has announced that he will not be running.

Ron Paul Fundraising

We had heard that Ron Paul had raised a million dollars toward the end of the quarter. Today Marc Ambinder is reporting that he raised $5.08M in the third quarter. Marc calls this "real money" and qualifies Ron Paul is positioned to be a "giant killer."

Fred, on the other hand, raised over $8M while only being a candidate for one month of the three months.

There is no question that Ron Paul's supporters are enthusiastic, but that does not mean that there are that many of them. The finance report does not include how many donors made up Ron Paul's contributions. (Fred has over 70,000 individual contributors).

Fred about Rush

National Review is publishing a comment from Fred regarding the discussions in Washington regarding Rush Limbaugh:

“Congressional Democrats are trying to divert attention from insulting our military leader in Iraq and pandering to the loony left by attacking Rush Limbaugh. He is one of the strongest supporters of our troops, yet Democrats claim he is not being strong enough. I wonder who General Petraeus and his troops think is most supportive?”

Social Security Solvency

In Iowa Fred is talking about changes to Social Security to save it from insolvency. It is very easy to figure out that you have very few options: 1) Cut benefits; 2) Increase taxes. The cutting of benefits, though, can take many forms. Some examples are to increase the retirement age or to put a "means test" on Social Security recipients. Well, here is what Fred is proposing:

In a meeting with reporters and editors at the Des Moines Register on Tuesday, Thompson suggested the key to reforming Social Security would be changing the rate of increase in benefits. The current system bases such increases on wages and Thompson suggests benefits increase in accordance with rises in the price of goods, which tend to increase at a slower level.

...And Starts Swinging

It is clear that Fred wants to make the distinction between his conservative credentials and his competitors. It appeared that he was going to make the point by pointing out his role in the 1994 Republican Revolution and let the rest of us figure out what Rudy and Mitt were up to.

Nope.

A blog entry on his web site today points it out explicitly:

There were those, even some Republicans, who didn’t see the need to run on conservative change. In his U.S. Senate race Mitt Romney disavowed being linked with President Reagan. In a debate Romney said,

I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.

In that campaign Romney opposed reducing the capital gains tax.

Rudy Giuliani also stood apart from mainstream Republicans. In 1994 he endorsed Democratic governor Mario Cuomo over George Pataki. Former White House speech writer Michael Gerson considered that act a symptom of “some loose ideological moorings.”

And earlier that year Giuliani stood before reporters and praised the efforts of illegal immigrants despite their lawbreaking:

FDT Unlacing the Gloves

There is an interview at the Politico with Fred that shows that he is ready to come out swinging. He is not looking to just swing for the sake of fighting, but it will be in response to certain situations:

When I asked him if he is an 11th Commandment man — Never speak ill of a fellow Republican — he responded, “I am more of a 12th Commandment man: Don’t speak ill of them until they speak ill of me. And then really speak ill of them.”

If my analysis is right, there will be no need for Fred to speak ill of Romney, McCain or any of the candidates lower in the polls--only Giuliani. I personally hope it doesn't come to that. I hope both of them are ready to make the general statement, "I can beat Hillary" and then tell why. I think Fred will win that discussion and the Republican party will be better for having the discussion. At the same time, he cannot let Giuliani beat up on him.

It does appear, however, that FDT is ready to deal with Hillary:

I read to him Bill Clinton’s recent comments that Thompson really didn’t seem to know much about some important issues.

Thompson’s face hardened quickly.

“I will take criticism from Bill Clinton all day long with a smile on my face,” Thompson said without a smile on his face. “I think I know where that is coming from.”

Which means from Hillary Clinton

McCain Still on the Ropes

The Politico is saying that McCain raised $5M in Q3 and, more importantly, $2M in debt.

I believe more and more that this is a two horse race.

Fred Coverage on Fox

brkcmo over at Blogs for Fred Thompson has posted a link to a Fox report on Fred's Q3 fund raising. They do strike a correct tone--only one month as a candidate; it is an amount that shows that he is legitimate. But what struck me was a couple of other items within the report. First, Cameron laid out very well the 1994 message that Fred will be using this week to cast himself as a long-term conservative as compared to Romney and Giuliani. Second, the precariousness of Romney's current situation. Cameron is positive about Romney's prospects as he is still in first place in Iowa, but that the big three are all within striking distance.

Romney's campaign strategy requires that he wins BOTH Iowa and New Hampshire. In Iowa, everything is closing up dramatically. In New Hampshire he lead has dropped to less than 4 points. It looks like Romney will end up raising less than $10M in Q3 before his own contributions, so his fund raising is dropping off.

I think Romney's candidacy is almost over (practically, even if he stays on for a long time because he can afford to).

Poll Confusion

Strange poll results in South Carolina.

Real Clear Politics has posted poll results on September 30th and October 1st from two different organizations: Rasmussen and American Research Group. The polls cover roughly the same period yet they come up with drastically different results.

ARG:
Thompson: 10
Giuliani: 23
Romney: 26

Rasmussen
Thompson: 24
Giuliani: 20
Romney: 15


Rasmussen's numbers are more in line with the other polls that have been taken. I think there is something dramatically wrong with the American Research Group poll. Their other polls seem to be ok, but this one seems really off.

The Media Comments on Fundraising

No surprises here. The early numbers, as previously reported, are that Fred has raised over $8M in Q3. It looks like Romney will report having raised $10M in the same period and that he loaned his campaign $6-7M in the same period. The patently liberal MSNBC blog Firstread is commenting on how much of a struggle Fred is having:

Here's something to compare Thompson's money to: the 1st Q numbers of his three main rivals: Romney raised 21.2M; Giuliani raised 16.6M; McCain raised 13M.

By comparison, Fred’s $7-8M (or even $10 million) this quarter is not great.

As usual they miss critical information. Q3 is not Q1. Q3 is traditionally a very slow time for contribution generally. Fred was only a candidate for one month of the three months of the quarter. The campaign tried to manage expectations by floating a $5M number last week, but even that cannot slow down those who seem to want to beat Fred down.

I really do think this is indicative of their fear of what Fred means to the election cycle. Possibly it is indicative of the fears of the beltway media about a FDT campaign.

Preliminary Fundraising Numbers

CBS is reporting that FDT will report "over" $8 million. This is dramatically more than the $5 million that was being floated last week, which is probably indicative of trying to control expectations better than in the second quarter.

But like the second quarter, it needs to be remembered that Fred only announced that he was officially running for President in September. So he only had one month of full candidacy for raising money. I also believe that there is a lot of money sitting on the sidelines waiting for Newt to decide on whether or not he is running.

My hope is that Newt will soon announce support for Fred and much of the money that would have gone to him will start coming into FDT's campaign.