Rather than give my own take on Fred’s campaign, I will direct you to Bob Krumm’s excellent and thorough critique which leaves us all wondering what could have been.

Jim Geraghty has a source inside the Thompson campaign:

He’s still with his ailing mother. “He’s just being a good son.”

He has not spoken to any other campaign or any other candidates, nor does he intend to at this time.

He will not endorse, I am told by this source close to Thompson.

I am also told, “he has no interest in a vice presidency or a cabinet position.” At an “appropriate time” he will outline his plans for the near future.

This source believes that the race has demonstrated that whatever happens from here on out, the GOP has to stand for consistent conservative policies across the board.

Geraghty also reports that Fred has dropped out of the Florida debate.

So the writing is on the wall and we are left contemplating why such a substantiative candidate failed?

Krumm lists the familiar reasons but I think it goes a little deeper than that – or at least, there is a more basic reason Fred failed; he was not entertaining.

I am amused by the laughter on the left over “Grandpa Fred” and his laid back demeanor. Perhaps if they examined their own fascination with the celebrity candidates on the Democratic side – an empty suit of a man running a campaign of cotton candy platitudes and half thought out policies along with a ruthless shrew whose grasp for power and influence is only slightly less nauseating than that of her philandering husband -they wouldn’t be quite so dismissive. Given that their likely candidate has a personality that makes Leona Helmsley look like a civic saint, one would think a little less gloating on their part might be in order.

After all, Fred thought about government and the relationship with the governed more than 10 Obama’s and 5 Hillary’s put together. Next to Fred, the Democratic party candidates come off like game show hosts. Democrat Bill Bradley comes to mind when looking for candidates who had given what to do after being elected so much thought. But Bradley too, was forced to run against a game show host in Al Gore and lost in the 2000 primaries. This current crop of small minded sophists on the Democratic side remind me of auctioneers bidding for votes among a grasping electorate who refuse to pay for government programs they already benefit from while begging for more.

Could Thompson have changed this dynamic? It’s an interesting thought experiment in that many conservatives in the think tanks believe that enacting federalism would impose a certain kind of civic discipline on Americans that would make most of us stop and think about whether a program or a benefit is really worth having. That’s because once responsibilities like that are returned to the state and local government, there is little doubt that people would be forced to pay for the benefits they desire. It would make both government and the citizens responsible adults when it comes to government spending at all levels.

No Democrat would ever contemplate such a radical shift and a Democrat controlled Congress would very likely not given Fred much of what he wanted if he had been elected. But even the Democrats can’t avoid the issue much longer. Fred literally wrote the book on the near future catastrophe at hand unless reforms in entitlement spending are initiated. In Government on the Brink (Volume II here) Thompson shows with a clarity lacking in so many of the superficial debates over “government spending” that there will shortly come a time when servicing the debt and paying for entitlements will eat up so much of the budget that it will not be possible to adequately defend ourselves or fund other, much needed domestic programs.

At any rate, this is what excited conservatives about Thompson in the first place and why I mourn the end of his campaign today. Fred Thompson talked about these and other issues that no other candidate would dare address. He didn’t speak in apocalyptic terms but rather explained his concerns in a straightforward, no nonsense, “Look people, this is the way it is and the way it’s gonna be” kind of way.

Krumm said that Thompson spoke in paragraphs when he needed to speak in sound bites. I don’t disagree strategically but I question whether Fred would have ever been able to do it and, given the substantiative subject matter, whether it was possible or not. I called him “The Anti-Soundbite Candidate” and indeed, it may have been a part of his undoing. But as I mentioned earlier, soundbites were only part of the problem.

Fred was running for president in a world where the selection process for the highest office in the land is conducted like auditions for American Idol. And the Simon Cowells in the media and punditland just didn’t think Thompson would ever become a star.

UPDATE

Just received this email from the campaign:

Statement from Sen. Fred Thompson

McLean, VA - Senator Fred Thompson today issued the following statement about his campaign for President:

“Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people.”

Thanks, Fred.

UPDATE II

Allah, playing it straight, has a point I don’t believe I’ve seen elsewhere:

So I’m chalking it up to disorganization. The alternative, that Bush killed the Reagan coalition dead and left Thompson types inviable no matter how efficiently their machines might run, is simply too terrible to contemplate.

Romney will certainly try to claim Reagan’s legacy but we all know that’s a crock. It would have been interesting to see Fred try to bring the factions together but Allah is suggesting that it may not have been possible to begin with.

One more thing, this may be bad news for Giuliani. Thompson was only pulling 6% in Florida but I think most of that will end up in Romney’s column. I wonder if Thompson’s national security conservatives who refuse to vote for McCain will end up in Rudy’s corner? That’s got to be a fairly small number of voters, however, and Rudy must be hopng that Huckabee discovers some cross over appeal to traditional conservatives in Florida.

I remember the heady days in early 2005 when it appeared that Republicans had a limitless future and the Democrats were the party of burnt toast and rancid eggs. It appeared that there was no way that the recently defeated Democrats would be able to pull their party together in time to challenge for the 2006 mid terms. And while everyone knew Hillary Clinton was preparing for a presidential run, most viewed that prospect with a certain relish, convinced that Mrs. Clinton’s high negatives would make taking her on a relatively simple task. (Most still prefer Hillary today but don’t see the job of beating her quite as easy.)

But if the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road to political success can often be boobytrapped with the sins of arrogance and overconfidence. If any of us had bothered to think about it seriously in the first months of 2005, we would have discovered precious few truly conservative candidates available to run for president – and none who stood out as real Commander in Chief material. As it turned out, several potential candidates met ignomious ends during the Mid Term Massacre of 2006 while others, like Newt Gingrich, showed little interest in running.

Now, with the continuation of the candidacy of Fred Thompson in question, the brutal truth is hitting home; the GOP standard bearer could very well be John McCain; a candidate with impeccable national security credentials but little else to offer conservatives save a promise that he will be better than his record indicates. The prospect of a McCain candidacy has set off flurry of pledge takers – as in, conservatives taking a pledge to stay home on election day if McCain is the nominee.

Stephen Bainbridge is one of them:

But it’s not just Bush. The deeply corrupt K Street gang discredited the GOP Congressional leadership, who proved to be concerned solely with clinging to power for power’s own sake.

God made the people of Israel wander in the desert 40 years so as to remake the Israelis Israelites into a people fit for the tasks ahead. The GOP seriously needs a time out so that it can rethink its role in American democracy. There are a lot of legitimate questions facing the GOP. Do you adhere to the limited government principles of Reagan and Thatcher or do you follow the lead of UK Tory leader David Cameron? As the Economist recently opined, “it seems likely that the Republican Party, as a number of its members are already urging, will have to embrace environmentalism and cuddly economics as the Tories were forced to.”

Fred Thompson was a more than acceptable Reaganesque conservative who offered the GOP a chance to delay having to face those tough choices. Indeed, to borrow a football metaphor, a Thompson presidency offered the GOP a chance to reload rather than going through the painful process of rebuilding. The other 4 are all so deeply and irredeemably flawed that their presidency likely would be doomed to failure from the outset.

I’m not quite as pessimistic as Stephen for the simple reason I know of too many presidents who were horribly underestimated by their contemporaries who ended up doing very well. Linconln was one. Reagan another. The office itself will have its way with the occupant and the forces of history will shape and be shaped by anyone who sits in The Big Chair. Who is to say how any of those men will perform?

But Bainbridge is correct otherwise. The GOP is a broken party. If the next nominee could win through to victory, they would have the opportunity to place their imprint on the party for years to come. And the chances of a McCain or Romney getting that opportunity chills the bones of conservatives from all factions of the movement.

But I have argued in the past (and despite some moments of weakness) will argue again in the future that voting is a civic responsibility and that if you are mad at Republicans, there are other, more legitimate ways to show your displeasure than sitting home. Voting for the Democratic alternative is an option for some. Voting for a third candidate is another way to protest against the direction the party is taking.

But frankly, I will hold harmless any conservative who wishes to stay at home on election day if John McCain is the nominee. For myself, I don’t know what I will do as far as voting but I know that he will receive no favors from me on this blog. The same would probably be true for Romney as well. My heart just wouldn’t be in promoting the candidacy of a man as changeable as the former center-left governor of Massachussets.

James Joyner has it about right:

Alternatively, I suppose, one could argue that the intellectual base of the party is fine. Rather, its politicians are abandoning principle for expediency in pandering to an electorate that constantly demands more government subsidies. Traditionally, conservative Republicans embraced tax cuts and small government. Now, the movement’s elected leaders, with very few exceptions, embrace tax cuts and big government.

Hagiography aside, that trend started with Ronald Reagan. He wanted tax cuts, huge increases in defense spending, and big cuts in domestic spending. He settled for the first two, however, along with massive public debt. It proved to be a very popular platform. Aside from the Ross Perot boomlet in 1992, fiscal responsibility turned out not to be a very salient electoral strategy.

Joyner highlights the biggest challenge of all; how to play an effective scrooge when Santa Claus is so wildly popular. By abandoning fiscal responsibility as a tenet of conservative governance, we have made other conservative values like personal responsibility and self-discipline irrelevant. The American people demand services from government whether it is government’s business to dispense that service or not. What’s more, they still want their children and grandchildren to pay for it judging by how unpopular raising taxes has become.

Conservatives have no credibility in seeking to deny or restrain the people’s appetitite for these benefits simply because our so-called conservative leaders are as eager to play Santa as the liberals. Hence, the disconnect between conservatives and mainstream America is complete. We simply are not believed when conservative candidates talk about small government or individual responsibility. Conservaties in government don’t practice those values. Why should anyone else?

Did Fred Thompson have a chance to turn this around? Joyner points out Thompson’s voting record being not that much different from McCain’s. This may be true but at the same time, I truly believe that Thompson had thought long and hard about changing this relationship between the government and the governed and hit upon a new kind of federalism to bring some balance back to the equation. Whether he could have pushed it through Congress is open to question. But he was basing his candidacy on the principles of Reaganism and federalism – a powerful combination that could have prevailed if the courage to enact it could have been found.

Whether conservatives hold their nose and vote for him or stay at home it will hardly matter in the long run. McCain will not govern as a conservative and will almost surely freeze conservatives out of major policy positions. If this is what Rush Limbaugh and others mean by destroying the party by making it simply a poor echo of the Democrats then count me out. I hardly see a difference between the damage that would be done by a McCain or Obama/Hillary.

Few choices. Fewer options.

If you’ve been following the polls for SC, you know how confusing that race has become. However, let’s go to the geniuses at Pollster.com for a look at what they consider the “endgame:”

For McCain, there is little dispute that he has surged since early December when he was in the low-teens to somewhere in the mid-to-upper 20s today. The sensitive estimator thinks the rate of climb since Iowa has been more rapid that does the blue estimator, but again both put his support between 26.9% and 29.3%.

The “Sensitive estimator” tracks the polls and through a formula, supplies a value based on the numbers. (There is a “Standard Tracking” line that works like the RCP averages). The sensitive estimator reflects a bounce for Huckabee out of Iowa that has ebbed slightly while McCain’s numbers took off in December and have kept climbing.

As for the others:

One big question in South Carolina is whether conservative criticism of both Huckabee and McCain is having any effect. If Thompson is benefiting from that, his polls only modestly show it. The sensitive estimate suggests a rise from about 10% to about 14%, but there is no polling evidence for a surge that would allow him to compete for first place.

Finally, Romney’s Michigan win seemed to help him in Nevada (based only on 3 polls, I should add) but there is no evidence of a bounce in South Carolina. After spending Wednesday and part of Thursday in the state, Romney appeared to concede the race and moved on the Nevada to campaign, where his chances look better. The Romney trends are also in complete agreement: No substantial trend, and both agree on 16%.

Based solely on the polling then (and this is not the best predictor of what is going to happen) it appears that there is some separation between McCain/Huckabee and Romney/Thompson with the former group in the mid to high 20’s and the latter in the mid-teens.

But for a variety of reasons, all we can do is use this data as a starting point. As many as 1 in 5 Republican voters are undecided as of this weekend with another third who may switch their votes.

Pollster.com points out that those undecideds in Iowa and Michigan broke decisively for the eventual winner which is why I think McCain will win going away. There is also the matter of Huckabee whose late gaffes regarding the confederate flag and some comments about the Constitution and religion may have hurt him slightly.

However, the Huckster probably has enough juice to hold off Thompson for second place.

And Fred? I think he surges past Mitt but comes up short, still finishing relatively strong.

SOUTH CAROLINA PREDICTIONS

1. McCain (29-33%)
2. Huckabee (19-23%)
3. Thompson (15-19%)
4. Romney (13-17%)
6. Giuliani (5-9%)
7. Paul (5-9%)

I think there is a chance a sizable number of undecideds will break for Fred rather than Huckabee or Romney. That may be enough to push Fred into second place but it is a long shot – say 10-1.

No polls out really reflect what has been happening the last 48 hours of the race so all of this might be totally off. But I’m not paid to be right, I’m paid to give it my best shot. And there you have it.

As for Nevada, the Republican race appears pretty straightforward. The Pollster.com guys point out there really haven’t been enough polls to draw any conclusions in which one could feel confident. I would agree except that despite McCain’s popularity in the state, that doesn’t necessarily translate into Caucus goers. We have the same situation we had in Iowa. Romney’s got a great organization in place and has visited the state several times – including the last two days. McCain has some enthusiasm and not much else.

Unlike Iowa where Huckabee had a network of churches and Fair Tax enthusiasts to get his people to the Caucuses, McCain has virtually nothing. So give this one to Mitt going away:

NEVADA CAUCUSES (GOP)

1. Romnney 31%
2. McCain 22%
3. Thompson 15%
4. Huckabee 13%
5. Giuliani 11%
6. Paul 6%

The Democratic race is a true muddle. Hillary probably hurt herself by suing to keep shift workers from caucusing. Obama probably stepped in it with his comments on Reagan. And like the Republicans, there just haven’t been enough polls to determine trends.

Some in the Netroots are reporting that there appears to be a late Obama surge. Take that with a grain of salt and a dose of wishful thinking. I think the race has been pretty static with Hillary holding a slight lead and Obama well within striking distance. Anything could happen and probably will (except an Edwards win).

I have no confidence at all in this prediction:

NEVADA DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS

1. Hillary Clinton 42%
2. Barack Obama 39%
3. John Edwards 14%
4. Dennis Kucinich 4%

Neither candidate helped or hurt much by the results, regardless of how it goes.

I really, really wish that there was evidence that Fred Thompson would do better than I’m predicting but I can’t find any. The latest ARG poll has Fred moving from 13% to 21% which I think is about right – an 8 point surge. But I don’t think he was starting at 13% – he was in single digits in late December and early January. So for Fred, a nice try but he will come up short.

Will he go on? I’m sure he will. Thanks to a pick up in fundraising, Fred can continue until after Super Tuesday when I’m sure all but the top two candidates – probably McCain and Romney – will reassess their chances.

UPDATE

Byron York writes what is almost an obituary for Thompson:

The RealClearPolitics average of polls in South Carolina has Thompson virtually tied with Mitt Romney for third place, well behind John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Most observers view this state as Thompson’s last stand, although his aides say simply that they don’t know what’s coming next. If he does leave the race, there will be lots of suggestions that he didn’t really want to run, that he didn’t have the taste for the frenetic campaigning that wins presidential primaries. No one beyond Thompson himself knows the answer to the first question, but there’s no doubt the latter is true; throughout the campaign, Thompson showed great impatience with some of the ridiculous demands presidential campaigns place on candidates. But on those occasions when he put himself into it fully, as he did at the Embassy Suites on Friday, Thompson left supporters wanting more — and wishing they had seen this months ago.

Thompson always seems most animated and most passionate when he talks of saving the Reagan coalition and battling for the “heart and soul” of the Republican party. These themes seem to hit him at a gut level and I wish he had drawn his campaign around them rather than his early emphasis on the danger to the country because of the growing menace of out of control entitlement programs and deficits.

But no use going back. The campaign is now what it is and nothing can change that. The candidate has found his voice and his themes. But it may not be enough.

UPDATE II: INTRADE

The markets are swinging decisively to Huckabee today. Not quite sure what to make of that except that if true, Fred drops considerably – down to 4th and the low teens for his support. That would finish his candidacy.

UPDATE III

It’s AP calling it for Mitt in Nevada. CNN will wait for raw numbers (do they see something screwy in the entrance polls?)

Dem race still to close to call.

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey reports on the ARG poll that shows Huckster winning handily and Fred breaking the 20 pt barrier. (Note the huge jump between Thursday and Friday for Huck from 23% to 33%.)

ARG called the Dem primary in New Hampshire in their last poll: Obama 41% Hillary 30%.

Just sayin.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Fred Thompson is not the most inspiring speaker in the GOP race for President. Nor is he the best looking or the smoothest talking among the candidates running. He doesn’t have Mitt Romney’s hair or Mike Huckabee’s glibness. He isn’t as aggressively positive as Rudy Giuliani. And while his personal story is compelling, it can’t compete with John McCain’s inspirational journey from POW to the gates of the White House.

But Fred Thompson is perhaps the most substantitive candidate to run for President in many years. He has taken the time to think about what should be the relationship between the government and the governed. He has framed his thoughts within the context of a set of bedrock conservative principles that animates his thinking and generates sound ideas about where America should be headed.

There is a heft to Thompson, a seriousness of purpose that none of the other candidates can match. It is most pronounced during the debates where Thompson’s answers to questions are more subtle and nuanced than those of his rivals. His sometimes laconic style zings his opponents with brutal accuracy.. Often, the candidate will answer a question by stating “Yep” or “Nope” and pause a few seconds to gather his thoughts. What follows is almost always coherent and is informed by years of experience in government.

His now famous moment during the Des Moines Register debate where he refused to raise his hand like a schoolboy when the moderator asked who believed in global warming was a metaphor for the entire Thompson campaign; keeping the Mickey Mouse to a minimum while trying to be as substantative as possible with the voters. In short, Thompson is running the campaign his way and not in a manner dictated by any previous candidate’s success or any criticism that comes his way from media pundits.

His well thought out policy positions – “White Papers” the campaign calls them – have won him almost universal praise from souces as wildly divergent as the Washington Post and the National Review.

For instance, the Wall Street Journal had this to say about Thompson’s tax plan:

“However, what’s refreshing about the Thompson plan is that it goes well beyond the current Republican mantra to make “the Bush tax cuts permanent.” That is certainly needed, but the GOP also needs a more ambitious agenda, especially with economic growth slowing. The flat tax has the added political benefit of assaulting the special interests who populate the Gucci Gulch outside Congress’s tax-writing committee rooms. Lower rates and simplify the tax code, and you instantly reduce the opportunities for Beltway corruption. It is both a tax policy and political reform.

ABC had this to say about his plan to save Social Security:

Republican presidential contender Fred Thompson’s plan to save Social Security and protect seniors, which he introduced Friday afternoon in a Washington, D.C., hotel, differs starkly from standard election year pablum on the subject in one key way: He’s actually treating voters like adults.

If all of this is true, why is Fred Thompson fighting for his political life this Saturday in the South Carolina primary?

It is a question that, if Thompson’s bid falls short, will be asked by many who saw the former Tennessee senator’s entry into the race as a godsend. In the end, the candidate must look to his own efforts and the way the campaign began.

Leaving aside the question of whether Thompson’s September entry into the race could be considered “too late” there is the reality of how that campaign was conducted. Looking back, one could see it was unfocused, even aimless, in its first weeks with the candidate himself trying to find his voice. His early efforts were spotty and sometimes dreadfully boring. By many reports, voters came away perplexed and not a little disappointed.

Thompson’s socratic style of addressing those early crowds was a good way to discuss issues on a substantive level but a lousy way to run for president. Voters more attuned to snappy, one sentence solutions to the problems of the world coming from other candidates found that when listening to Thompson, they had to think, not react emotionally.

In this way, Thompson appealed to people more on an intellectual level. This was fine as far as it went but it brought him few converts and elicited nothing but contempt from the media.

How often have we heard the refrain that the American people wanted a campaign that dealt with issues not personalities? Well, here was Fred Thompson supposedly giving people what we were told they wanted and his once robust poll numbers began to plummet. Seeking an explanation, reporters and pundits who saw Thompson arrived at the conclusion that the candidate didn’t want it bad enough, that he had no “fire in the belly,” that he hated campaigning and didn’t extend himself as the other candidates were doing.

There may be a glimmer of truth in some of that conventional wisdom. Perhaps the candidate believed it was enough that he put his ideas on the table and let the American people decide whether or not they were worthy of consideration. Indeed, Thompson has said as much in the past. What perhaps the candidate didn’t realize is that fighting for those ideas and tying them to overarching themes is the most effective way to reach the voter.

But for whatever reason – the befuddlement of the press over his style of campaigning or a perceived lack of energy and desire – the candidate found himself at the end of November trailing badly in the polls. It was then that the campaign seemed to find itself and Thompson found those themes as well as his issues and tied them together. Crowds began to react more positively. It appeared the candidate himself was more energized and active.

But Thompson was pushing against weeks of very negative press and a conventional wisdom that had all but written him off. It was a daunting task to turn the campaign around but he has. Now he must convince voters in South Carolina and beyond that the conventional wisdom about his candidacy is wrong and that he deserves a second look.

His most recent appearances in South Carolina have shown an entirely different candidate than the one who appeared unfocused and low key during the first three months of his campaign. He has now found his mission; that the campaign is for the heart and soul of the Republican party and the future of the old Reagan coalition. When speaking in this vein, the candidate exudes a passion that may have been lacking in his earlier campaign stops. It carries over into his contrasting the records of his opponents with his own as he hammers away at their lack of true conservative credentials. He still talks specifics and issues but in a way that delineates his positions from those of his rivals. In short, he has found the bridge between a way to campaign effectively without sacrificing his belief that the voters hunger for substance in their candidate.

Thompson still pauses and thinks before he answers questions either from the media or voters. He speaks in complete sentences. He treats voters like “adults” as ABC mentioned above. In this sense, he is the anti-soundbite candidate. Whether Thompson’s no-nonsense approach to campaigning will give him victory will depend largely on whether voters are moved to support a man who views running for president not as the fullfillment of raw ambition but as a chance to serve the people.

Two polls out today show Fred Thompson picking up a head of steam and moving toward the leaders.

A PPP poll out today (sampling from yesterday) shows Fred in a virtual tie for second with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee:

Public Policy Polling South Carolina Republican Primary (PDF warning)

McCain – 28%
Huckabee – 20%
Romney – 18%
Thompson – 17%
Paul – 4%
Giuliani – 4%

And Zogby’s 4 day tracking poll has Fred moving up also, passing Romney for third place:

Zogby South Carolina GOP Primary Poll

John McCain 29% (-)
Mike Huckabee 22% (-1)
Fred Thompson 14% (+2)
Mitt Romney 12% (-1)
Ron Paul 5% (-)
Rudy Giuliani 5% (-1)

Historically, a candidate that is surging sees a lag in poll numbers of a couple of days because of the way polls are conducted. Even a tracking poll will have a slight lag for similar reasons.

Other polls released in the past few days show Fred in a slightly worse position. But if you take out the highs and lows while averaging Fred’s support it would appear that Thompson is virtually tied for third with Romney with Fred’s numbers going up, Huckabees going down, and McCain staying pretty much the same (about a 6 point lead over Huckabee).

Romney took one look at this situation and headed for Nevada. Declaring McCain the winner in South Carolina, Mitt will race around Nevada until the Saturday Caucuses, trying to build on his narrow lead over McCain in that state.

Meanwhile, Fred is still splitting the anti-McCain vote in South Carolina three ways and is desperately trying to peel supporters away from Huckabee.

It’s working. But is it working fast enough for Fred to win in South Carolina?

The answer is almost certainly no. Another week and who knows? But the primary is 48 hours away and I don’t think he can cut into McCain’s lead enough to overtake him. The Arizona senator has what Zogby calls a “very stable” lead. It would be the upset of the campaign season if Fred were to beat him.

I do think, however, that a strong second place is within Thompson’s grasp. Huckabee is changing his positions on issues almost every news cycle now, trying to stop the bleeding. What I’m sure he sees in his own polls is Fred’s surge and the fact that being hammered on immigration and taxes is playing very well for Fred in the state.

And cheer up, Fredheads. I think a second place for Thompson means a ticket to Florida and probably Super Tuesday. Why should Fred drop out when nothing has been decided and he has proven he can come back? There’s another debate before the Florida primary and lord knows what Fred will come up with for that one. Probably has the rest of them wondering too.

I predict Fred will get into the low 20’s on primary day. Considering he was single digits in South Carolina earlier this month, that would be a stupendous comeback. And in this, the wackiest primary season in a while, none of the top 5 candidates can really be consigned to the dustbin of history quite yet.

UPDATE

Allah links the Quin Hillyer fantasy piece in American Spectator and wonders what stage of the grief process he’s in over the imminent demise of Fred’s candidacy.

Color me between denial and bargaining. I’d sell my soul for a Fred win.

The fat lady has been canceled. The obit in the New York Times has been pulled. Funereal flower arrangements have been replanted. Behests have been returned.

And a moribund candidacy, coming to life at last, can boast that famous Mark Twain retort “Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”

Fred Thompson is alive and well and surging in South Carolina.

The latest Rasmussen poll shows Fred Thompson in a statistical tie for second place:

Over the past several days, the only real movement in South Carolina’s Republican Presidential Primary has been a four-point gain for Fred Thompson and a five-point decline for Mike Huckabee.

The big winner from that trade-off is John McCain.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows McCain at 28%, Huckabee at 19%, Mitt Romney at 17%, and Fred Thompson at 16%. Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul are tied with 5% support. Giuliani is betting his entire campaign on a strong showing in Florida, where he is now tied for the lead with three others. ...

There has been much talk about Thompson going easy on McCain in the debate and in TV appearances since then. Yesterday on CNN’s Late Edition, Fred barely laid a glove on McCain. This has led to some spurious rumors that Thompson is a stalking horse for McCain and will drop out after South Carolina and endorse the Arizonian, being rewarded with the Vice Presidential nomination later.

That’s not quite how I see it.

It makes sense for Fred to lay off McCain until after Michigan. If his friend can knock off Romney in the state of his birth, even Daddy Warbucks would have to concede his candidacy is virtually finished. After Michigan, Fred would be free to go after McCain’s immigration record – a very easy task and one that would resonate powerfully with South Carolina voters.

Even if he doesn’t go after McCain, Romney might do it for him, seeing a Thompson win as the only way he stays viable into Florida.

A Thompson victory in South Carolina would essentially mean there would have been 4 major primaries with 3 different winners. This would mean on to Florida for everyone. Even a strong second by Thompson may tempt him to go on to Florida where Fred has also seen an uptick in his support, finding himself just 8 points out of the lead.

Okay, so it’s only 4 point surge. But it is a surge nonetheless and if it denotes momentum on Thompson’s part, watch out. The biggest hurdle Thompson has now is convincing people it is not too late to vote for him. The fact that a sizable number of South Carolinians have made that decision is heartening.

Someone pass the word to the eulogist to stand down. Fred ain’t dead yet.

UPDATE

Allah continues his torture of Fredheads. What is truly remarkable is that the Fredheads keep coming back for more. It’s like Allah has them trained to give a Pavlovian response to his sly insults and clever bon mots.

Allah evidently still doesn’t think Fred has much of a chance and I’d agree. But his prospects have improved since last week – even Allah would have to admit that. And given the utter weirdness of this primary season, I say that anything can and probably will happen before all is said and done. Whether that lightening strikes Fred or not is another matter.

UPDATE: “10 at 10” Drive for a Million

C’Mon Fredheads. We’re almost there. Less than $30,000 to reach that million dollar goal (that was originally a $540,000 goal and then a $750,000 goal). Last Thursday, we had about $400,000 in the tank of the little red pickup. Now we’re kissing a mil thanks to your generosity and Fred’s building momentum.

If we all give just $10 at 10:00 PM tonight, we’ll smash that million dollar barrier so that Fred can blanket the airwaves in South Carolina with his positive message of true conservatism.

UPDATE: “WE’RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER TRUCK…”

At around 8:15 PM central time, the campaign surpassed their $1,000,000 goal.

The website is crashing. The videos on the site won’t load because of the heavy traffic. The campaign is turning people away from events an hour before Fred makes his appearance.

TOO LATE MY ASS!

Watching the debate aftermath on Fox last Thursday and listening to the focus group give their reasons for why Fred Thompson won the debate, I had something of an epiphany.

Each member of the focus group gave their personal opinion of why they thought Fred won and then, almost as an afterthought, most of them threw in the bit about it being “too late” for Fred to win, as if mouthing the conventional MSM wisdom about Fred it made them seem “smarter” – at least in their own eyes.

My epiphany was that they really didn’t believe that. No rational person could say after two primaries that it was “too late” for anything or for anybody. This goes double for the GOP race since even the most cynical analyst would have to conclude that the race is still wide open.

Why would otherwise rational people regurgitate what they believe is the dominant media narrative about any candidate – especially after the utter, complete, total, meltdown of punditry with regard to New Hampshire? The fact is, Frank Luntz wasn’t asking those members of his focus group to give their opinion. He was asking them to be pundits on live television. In that respect, the whole purpose of the focus group was defeated and what we were left with were ordinary people trying to imitate their favorite talking head on TV. Those good citizens, if pressed, would not be able to tell you why it was too late for Thompson. And it they did they would simply echo what they had heard or read previously.

My reading is that television (and to a lesser extent radio and print media) punditry is a hugely competitive business. And you don’t get ahead by being right. You get ahead by being one step ahead of everybody else in analyzing what will happen tomorrow. In that sense, obituaries are a natural. All it takes is a few well known writers or commentators to start the idea and before long, the whole baying pack have picked up the scent and the conventional wisdom becomes set in stone.

Now there is no doubt that Fred Thompson’s campaign suffered through nearly 3 months of running in place – uninspiring, unfocused, even aimless at times. And prior to that, the media, like little children on a long car trip, got antsy about the candidate’s entry into the race. In short, the pundits were writing Thompson’s obituary before he ever got in and then once running, discovered that there really wasn’t much to write or talk about. Thompson’s low key appearances where he talked about a future in peril due to our profligate spending and inability to deal with entitlements was not playing well with the voters and as a result, his poll numbers tanked.

But the campaign changed in the middle of December and has been much more focused in delivering its message. The candidate himself has become more active and the people in Iowa seemed to respond.

But when do you throw conventional wisdom in the trash and start over? For pundits, they guard CW as if it were the crown jewels because bound up in that blather is their reputation, their self esteem, their raison d’etre. Only a political earthquake (or the intrusion of a New Hampshire like reality) can dislodge the punditocracy from their cherished talking points.

Well, there is a political earthquake going on in South Carolina and I believe that conventional wisdom is about to be turned on its head. In the two days since the GOP debate, Fred Thompson has been drawing enthusiastic, overflow crowds all over South Carolina. The candidate himself has not only been energized but I believe he has finally found a theme that resonates with all factions in the party; this election will decide the fate of the Republican party and what kind of party do you want? Do you want it to be the party of Huckster? The party of Rudy? The party of McCain? The party of interloper Romney?

Limbaugh had it right. When Thompson made that impassioned plea for the Reagan coalition and called out Huckabee for his liberalism, it was almost “orgasmic” for many conservatives. And more importantly for Thompson, the campaign may very well have turned then and there.

Are those the crowds of a candidate at 9% in the polls?

It’s difficult for me to separate myself from my cheerleading tendencies and give a dispassionate analysis of where the Thompson campaign stands in South Carolina. But if those crowds continue to turn out and even grow, it would be hard to dismiss the idea that Fred is back in the hunt and regardless of what McCain does in Michigan, has a decent shot at the gold there.

And conventional wisdom will just have to adjust itself to that fact.

UPDATE

Very smartly, I think, the campaign is trying to cash in on the building momentum by continuing their fundraising effort. Now they’re looking to raise a cool million by midnight tomorrow night. As of this morning at 7:30 central, they’re at $871,000.

Fred has enough for a very good ad buy and would probably use the extra cash to maximize his ground game in South Carolina. Use the handy form below and help Fred go the distance.

Well, you guys have done it again.

Our Blogburst for Fred is once again rolling like a juggernaut, raising gobs of cash for Fred’s run for the gold in South Carolina.

We flew by the original goal of $540,000 around 24 hours ago and have just kept going, aided by Fred’s remarkable performance in the debate last night. As of 2:30 central time, the total is at $710,000, climbing toward a revised goal made by the campaign this morning of $750,000.

If successful, we will have helped the campaign raise $330,000 in less than 48 hours.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the more than 100 donors who have given nearly $9,000 through this website over the last two blogbursts. I am proud that you have been so generous in your support of Fred’s campaign.

For those of you who haven’t yet given, did you see the debate last night? Conservatives have a candidate they can call their own without feeling uneasy or unsure about him. And judging by the crowds Fred is pulling in today, I sense a groundswell building that, if the campaign can take advantage of it, will propel Fred into contention in South Carolina very quickly.

What are you waiting for? Help Fred Thompson win in South Carolina by donating right now. It’s easy. And I guarantee you’ll feel good afterwards.

And while your at it, go here and sign up as a Friend of Fred and get all the inside news on the campaign.

(If you need a script for the above widget, go here.)

More than any other forum, this debate in South Carolina revealed the growing divisions in the Republican party and highlighted the extraordinarily difficult task that confronts the future nominee.

Here is the conumdrum facing the GOP; an awakened social conservative wing whose emergence frightens the Republican establishment and the smaller but influential libertarian conservative faction. A fiscal conservative wing of the party, bruised and battered by 8 years of non-conservative governance supporting McCain and Romney mostly by default given the alternative offered of big government conservative Huckabee. And foreign policy hawks – neocons as well as traditional conservatives – who like McCain but dislike his immigration stand.

Romney is the only frontrunner who can lay claim to even partially bridging the gaps in the old GOP coalition that has brought Republicans victory so often for the last 30 years. But social conservatives don’t trust his recent conversions to their anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage cause while others simply view him as too canned, too packaged – not “authentic” enough to lead.

Is it any wonder that many conservatives of all stripes have looked at Fred Thompson as the only viable candidate who could pull the factions together? And many of us have waited for months for Fred to stand up and accept the challenge to bring the coalition back from the dead.

I have been critical of Thompson in the past (who hasn’t) for running an unfocused campaign. But tonight, he was magnificent. When Fred talks about the future of the party he becomes animated, passionate, and most importantly, makes good sense. His answers to almost every question were thoughtful, measured, and exuded a competence that only perhaps Mitt Romney has ever matched. Here is a serious man thinking deeply about serious issues. No half cocked chest beating on foreign policy questions like those given by Huckabee. No talking points economic blather like that given by Mitt Romney. Fred’s answers penetrated to the heart of the matter and revealed rather than obscured his positions.

Is it too late for Fred? Judging by the Luntz focus group who gave Fred an overwhelming victory in the debate it may be premature to say he is too far behind and doesn’t have enough time to rally. But there is no doubt it will be an uphill climb. Money is tight. The perception is constantly being fed by the media that Fred is through. The conventional wisdom says that Thompson doesn’t have the heart or desire to be in it for the long haul.

I would only say in response that in my 35 years of watching politics, I have never seen a race so wide open. There is no front runner. Any one of 5 candidates can still compete for the prize. To dismiss any one of them is foolhardy.

And given that Fred has been left for dead, a victory in South Carolina – so radically unexpected and shocking – could very well propel Thompson into Florida and Super Tuesday beyond with enough momentum for him to emerge on February 6 as one of the two candidates with a chance at the nomination.

Fred Thompson’s campaign is once again at a critical juncture and again I am showing my support for the candidate of my choice by organizing a Blogburst in hopes that we can raise the funds necessary for Fred’s campaign to be competitive.

This time, it’s South Carolina where Fred is staking all in hopes of a breakthrough victory. A clinical analysis of the GOP race for President shows that it is still anyone’s ballgame. Rasmussen’s most recent 4 day rolling average has Fred in 4th at 12%, ahead of Giuliani and just 9 points out of the lead held by Mike Huckabee at 22%.

But Thompson desperately needs to win in South Carolina in order to continue to be a viable candidate. And there are several factors at play in the Palmetto State that makes a Thompson win a realistic goal:

1. Romney has dropped out of the running in SC, having pulled his ads and is transferring staff in order to ambush John McCain in Michigan.

2. That leaves only three candidates with a realistic shot at winning in SC; Huckabee, McCain, and Thompson. Amazingly, none of the three candidates will have an overwhelming advantage when it comes to financing. This levels the playing field considerably.

3. SC voters have made it clear that opposition to illegal immigration is one of the top issues in the state. Looking at the three candidates above, who do you think has the most consistent, conservative record on immigration?

4. Outside factors may play a role in the dynamics of the race. McCain may very well be grievously wounded by a Romney win in Michigan – a state he won in 2000. There would be little time for McCain to right himself following a loss there what with the SC primary 4 days later.

In short, a Thompson win in SC is not only possible but within reach – if Fred has the money for media buys to get his message to the people.

I realize that many bloggers who support Fred have been hitting their readers hard for donations recently – especially since Fred’s campaign has set as a goal raising $540,000 by tomorrow in order to finance his ad campaign. As of Thursday morning, the effort has realized $420,000 towards that goal.

My hope is that once again, speaking with one voice and calling on our readers to dig deep, we can duplicate our success from December’s blogburst, putting Fred way over the top and give the campaign a rocket powered boost into South Carolina and beyond.

We’ve done it before and we can do it again. If you’re a blogger, please participate in this Blogburst for Fred by asking your readers to donate. If you haven’t already, join Jim Lynch’s The Marblehead Regiment and add your blog to his blogroll.

Man the oars and start pulling for Fred. The hour is late and the need is great. Time to pony up if we want to see a true conservative in the White House next November.

(If you need a script for the above widget, go here.)