It was a cringe inducing day for Thompson in the MSM and blogosphere coverage. There was Carl Cameron picking up on the Gucci loafers and the golf cart ride through the Iowa fair. Politico picked up on the lukewarm reception and the crowd’s disappointment that more substance wan’t offered. MSM coverage echoed the same. He then gave a remarkably muddled interview with John King, leading to guffaws at Campaign Spot and confusion about what he meant with this response to a question on abortion and gay marriage:
“I think with regard to gay marriage you have a [ inaudible ] issue. I don’t think one state ought to be able to pass a law requiring gay marriage or allowing gay marriage and have another state be required to follow along under full faith and credit. There’s some exceptions, exemptions for that. Hasn’t happened yet, but I think a federal court very well likely will go in that direction. And the constitutional amendment would cure that. I think Roe versus Wade was a bad decision. There were things that are bad law and bad medicine. You don’t just get up one day and overturn the entire history of the country with regard major social policies without any action by Congress, without any action by the American people or a constitutional amendment. And that’s what happened. Shouldn’t have happened. It ought to be reversed.”
If you don’t have the foggiest what that’s all about neither did CNN. This caused him to offer this clarification picked up at NRO:
“In an interview with CNN today, former Senator Fred Thompson’s position on constitutional amendments concerning gay marriage was unclear.Thompson believes that states should be able to adopt their own laws on marriage consistent with the views of their citizens. He does not believe that one state should be able to impose its marriage laws on other states, or that activist judges should construe the constitution to require that.If necessary, he would support a constitutional amendment prohibiting states from imposing their laws on marriage on other states. Fred Thompson does not support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.”
The John King interview also had this answer to a query about what we should do in Iraq:
“You can’t deal with it on a hypothetical basis. Right now we need to make every effort to make sure that we don’t get out of there with our tail between our legs before we’ve done our job securing that place and stabilizing the place so that the whole place doesn’t go up into chaos and tens of thousands more innocent people don’t get killed and the whole place becomes a nuclearized on — on a sea of oil as it were. Bad, bad results for America. And we shouldn’t even be talking about anything else except sustained activity until we get a report back from General Petraeus in the middle of September. I think they’re making progress there. I think we have to come to terms with the fact that Iraq is only a part of a global problem that’s going to be with us for a while. It’s going to take a lot of time, effort, and money. We need to face up to that fact, because the security of America and the next generation depends on it.”
You might not be surprised that throughout the day opposing camps and their supporters were lobbing transcripts and YouTube coverage of Fred’s rocky day. Are the Guggis and golf cart minor things? Yes, but surprisingly tone deaf for a candidate trying to put behind him a lobbying snafu and a laziness issue. As for the lack of substance with the crowd and the King interview Thompson can’t afford any more of this. He needs to have crisp, understandable answers to standard press questions and something to say other than chit chat when he meets with voters. Otherwise Romney and Huckabee will be looking at him in the rear view mirror.
And time and political momentum are not his friends. The latest Gallup has Rudy leading him 33% to 19% — Fred down 2 pts from the last poll, Romney up 6pts and McCain down 5pts.
UPDATE: And in Florida Rasmussen Rudy has gone from 22 to 30% while Fred has gone from 21 to 17%. Romney has edged up to 15%.
