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The Spectacle Blog

In a series of recent posts (here and here) I laid out what I thought to be Fred Thompson's greatest weakness--the fact that even though he does a good job communicating the challenges America is facing, he doesn't explain what he has actually accomplished in the past that should make voters feel confident that he's candidate most qualified to lead us through those challenges. With that said, I thought it was only fair to explain what I thought to be his biggest advantage as a candidate.

In my view the best case you can make for Thomson is that he's the only Republican candidate capable of unifying the party. We know the Democrats will be unified. Whatever happens during the primary, they will rally around their nominee, because they are desperate to take back the White House. Republicans, however, are still sniping at one another, and each of the current top three candidates has something about him that bothers a portion of the party. A contingent of social conservatives won't accept Rudy, even if Romney wins the nomination a lot of Republicans will still be fed up with his inauthenticity, and McCain, well, he's McCain. But Thompson could be the one candidate that the entire party can get behind. He may not be everybody's first choice, but he isn't going to anger one group of Republicans so much that they'll want "Anybody But Fred." At least Thompson has that potential. That should be one of his main selling points.