Welcome to the 2008 Presidential campaign, Fred Thompson!

Set to announce his candidacy as soon as this week, the former Senator from Tennessee is ready to turn his front porch campaign into a full blown effort to reach for the brass ring. And by doing so, Fred has unleashed those Media Furies whose tried and true methods of smearing and destroying GOP hopefuls has been honed to a fine point through more than 50 years of flinging feces and slinging slime at their ideological opponents.

There’s never been anything subtle about these campaigns. The Furies don’t do nuance. Rather, their attacks are full frontal assaults on decency and the truth - all the better to stick the knife into the vitals of their target and give it a few good twists.

The astonishing thing is that without coordination or “conspiracy,” the three most screechingly anti-Republican news outlets in the country - the LA Times, the NY Times, and the AP - all published what can only be described as “hit pieces” in a period of three days.

Now, it should be said that looking at the record of the Senator while he was a lobbyist is perfectly legitimate journalism and provides the public with pertinent information on Mr. Thompson’s character and qualifications. But this LA Times piece that breathlessly reveals the fact that Fred “lobbied” for a pro-choice outfit in the 1990’s could have used a few fact checkers and editors before it saw print. If they had done so, it is doubtful the “revelation” would have been news at all.

First, the story:

Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as an antiabortion Republican, accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and several people familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for the former Tennessee senator denied that Thompson did the lobbying work. But the minutes of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. say that the group hired Thompson that year.

His task was to urge the administration of President George H. W. Bush to withdraw or relax a rule that barred abortion counseling at clinics that received federal money, according to the records and to people who worked on the matter.

The abortion “gag rule” was then a major political flashpoint. Lobbying against the rule would have placed Thompson at odds with the antiabortion movement that he is now trying to rally behind his expected declaration of a presidential bid.

Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo adamantly denied that Thompson worked for the family planning group. “Fred Thompson did not lobby for this group, period,” he said in an e-mail.

Basically, the family planning outfit swears that Thompson lobbied John Sununu, then Chief of Staff to Bush #41 at the White House. However, not only Thompson denies it but Sununu says it’s a bunch of bull as well:

Sununu said in a telephone interview: “I don’t recall him ever lobbying me on that at all. I don’t think that ever happened. In fact, I know that never happened.” He added that he had “absolutely no idea” whether Thompson had met with anybody else at the White House, but said it would have been a waste of time, given the president’s opposition to abortion rights.

In response to Sununu’s denial, DeSarno said Thompson “owes NFPRHA a bunch of money” if he never talked to Sununu as he said he had.

Absolutely let’s get to the bottom of this. Let’s look at the billing records and any other evidence that the family planning group may have of Thompson’s work on their behalf. All we have right now are the minutes from one meeting where this announcement of hiring Thompson was supposedly made and the accounts of several pro-choice activists.

Not a lot to hang your hat on if you were doing an important story that could potentially affect a presidential race. But the LA Times wasn’t interested in accuracy or the truth. They were interested in smearing Fred Thompson. And with Thompson’s categorical denials as well as Sununu’s supporting testimony, it would seem that either the Times was taken in by this pro-choice group or, more likely, simply saw an opportunity to stick the knife into a leading GOP candidate for President.

This LA Times story could be considered a barely legitimate exercise in journalism disguising a vicious smear designed to lower Thompson’s standing with a key GOP interest group - the anti-abortion crowd. But the New York Times makes absolutely no bones about practicing legitimate journalism in this shocking piece on Thompson’s wife where Times Fashion writer Susan Saulny refers to the Tennessee Senator as “grandfatherly” and Jeri Kehn Thompson as a “trophy wife:”

AS the election of 2008 approaches with its cast of contenders who bring unprecedented diversity to the quest for the White House, the voting public has been called on to ponder several questions: Is America ready for a woman to be president? What about a black man? A Mormon?

Now, with the possible candidacy of Fred D. Thompson, the grandfatherly actor and former Republican senator from Tennessee, whose second wife is almost a quarter-century his junior, comes a less palatable inquiry that is spurring debate in Internet chat rooms, on cable television and on talk radio: Is America ready for a president with a trophy wife?

The question may seem sexist, even crass, but serious people — as well as Mr. Thompson’s supporters — have been wrestling with the public reaction to Jeri Kehn Thompson, whose youthfulness, permanent tan and bleached blond hair present a contrast to the 64-year-old man who hopes to win the hearts of the conservative core of the Republican party. Will the so-called values voters accept this union?

The unbelievable insult to Mr. and Mrs. Thompson written by a Fashion section writer should not surprise us in the least. When putting on the smear, the Times will utilize any section of its publication it sees fit to best highlight where it wants to apply the slime. I suppose the “Style” section would be the best place to talk about a “trophy wife” - if such things were important enough to be included in a presidential campaign. But since they’re not and since Ms. Saulny plays rough and ready with her prose - “but serious people — as well as Mr. Thompson’s supporters” who I guess are not serious people but rather stupid, goober chewing, bible thumping, mouth breathing “values voters” (so-called) and must be instructed in what is obviously an issue that they should cluck their tongues and wag their heads about - it shouldn’t come as a shock the depths to which the Times will sink to savage an ideological foe.

I can’t remember any news outlet printing such a slanderous piece of tripe against a candidate’s wife . Jeri Thompson is no bimbo. She’s an accomplished attorney and by all accounts, smart as a whip. Wouldn’t you love to see a picture of Susan Saulny? What do you think the odds are they her looks and figure suffer by comparison with Mrs. Thompson?

Just wondering.

Finally, this deceptive AP story came out on Saturday with the headline “Fred Thompson aided Nixon on Watergate.” If true, one would guess that Thompson has a lot of explaining to do.

But the story isn’t about Thompson “aiding” Nixon on Watergate. It’s about Thompson doing his job as minority counsel on a Senate investigating committee. Here’s how Thompson described his role in his book At That Point in Time, published in 1975:

Thompson, who declined comment for this story, described himself in his book, “At That Point in Time,” published in 1975, as a Nixon administration “loyalist” who struggled with his role as minority counsel. “I would try to walk a fine line between a good-faith pursuit of the investigation and a good-faith attempt to insure balance and fairness,” Thompson wrote.

The AP story does dispel the myth that Thompson ferreted out the White House taping system information from Alexander Butterfield. Republican investigators had gotten that information from Butterfield days prior to his questioning the White House underling before the cameras. But the guts of this AP hit piece is not so much that Thompson did anything improper, it’s how the Nixon Administration viewed the 30 year old lawyer:

Publicly, Baker and Thompson presented themselves as dedicated to uncovering the truth. But Baker had secret meetings and conversations with Nixon and his top aides, while Thompson worked cooperatively with the White House and accepted coaching from Nixon’s lawyer, J. Fred Buzhardt, the tapes and transcripts show.

“We’ve got a pretty good rapport with Fred Thompson,” Buzhardt told Nixon in an Oval Office meeting on June 6, 1973. The meeting included a discussion of former White House counsel John Dean’s upcoming testimony before the committee.

Dean, the committee’s star witness, had agreed to tell what he knew about the break-in and cover-up if he was granted immunity against anything incriminating he might say.

Nixon expressed concern that Thompson was not “very smart.”

“Not extremely so,” Buzhardt agreed.

“But he’s friendly,” Nixon said.

“But he’s friendly,” Buzhardt agreed. “We are hoping, though, to work with Thompson and prepare him, if Dean does appear next week, to do a very thorough cross-examination.”

Five days later, Buzhardt reported to Nixon that he had primed Thompson for the Dean cross-examination.

“I found Thompson most cooperative, feeling more Republican every day,” Buzhardt said. “Uh, perfectly prepared to assist in really doing a cross-examination.”

It was the job of the minority counsel to prepare for cross examining witnesses brought by Democrats. Why the AP would cast such a negative light on what was so obviously part of Thompson’s job reveals much about their motives for going with the story in the first place. That and the fact that the historian quoted in the story - Stanley Kutler - an emeritus professor of law at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and author of numerous books on Watergate (guess where his political sympathies lie) seems to believe that any effort by any Republican on the Ervin Committee to defend Nixon should be seen as suspect - despite the fact that it was unclear until August of 1974 that the President was personally involved in the scandal.

This is the biggest non-story regarding Thompson to date and was published simply to tar the Senator with the Watergate mess. By most other objective accounts - including those written by Democrats - Thompson performed honorably and ably on the Committee. And this attempted smear by the AP notwithstanding, that’s how history will remember him during that period.

What these three hit pieces show is that Fred Thompson is a genuine danger to Democrats in the general election. His brand of moderate conservatism would go a long way toward re-uniting the GOP and bringing conservatives back to the fold by election day. While his less than doctrinaire stand on social issues may not play well with that segment of the GOP base, it appears even they are willing to make allowances for a candidate that can bring the Republicans victory in 2008.

No wonder the paragons of liberal virtue in the media seem worried.