The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Thompson and Lobbying

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Not to focus too much on Fred today, but just to play catch up on a story that we've been following on this blog, Jim Geraghty quotes a "friend of Fred Thompson" who responded to a Jennifer Rubin item I posted earlier this week in which she reported that Thompson's spokesman Mark Corallo contradicted his own candidate over whether Thompson called John Sununu to compare recollections about whether he lobbied for an abortion rights group:

Regarding Jennifer Rubin's accusation that the Thompson team had "contradicted" Fred Thompson, I'm afraid that was a misunderstanding. Rubin apparently thought she was asking whether Thompson had called Sununu at all. Corallo thought she was asking whether they'd spoken to coordinate their stories. Obviously, Thompson had called Sununu, and we'd already said that.

We weren't denying something we'd already confirmed…it was just a case of distinctions being lost in the text translation.

Meanwhile, the Politico's Mike Allen reports Thompson "is backing off his flat denial that he once lobbied for an abortion-rights group. He now says he doesn't remember it, but does not dispute evidence to the contrary." As I wrote initially, I found his denial fishy. In my view, the idea that he may have lobbied for an abortion rights group 16 years ago should not disqualify him from the nomination, nor do I even think it's that big of a deal. However, I think the Thompson camp would have been much better off initially by avoiding a flat out denial, or by using the defense that as a lawyer/lobbyist he represented all sorts of clients and that shouldn't be a political issue. But I think he extended the life of the story by intitialy attacking it as a left wing smear job that was totally bogus, considering that the story is likely true.

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty agrees that Thompson should not be associating himself with these kind of attacks.

topics:
Abortion, Law