Fred Drops Out

Sen. Thompson has issued the following statement:

Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States.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.

11 thoughts on “Fred Drops Out

  1. He never had a chance……woman dont like him…young voters dont like him….mainstream republicans dont like himn. He is a grumpy old lump. He is out of touch, has no idea what real middle class peopel are going through right now…..thats why he is done. Quite Frankly if the GOPO doesnt start producing candidates better than this lot, we are in trouble. I dont have single republican friend or family member who has any intention of voting for the GOP candidate……if Hillary gets the Dem nod, they might come out and vote against her but barring that they either stay home or are crossing over to vote for Obama if he gets the nod.

    Like i have said the GOP is clueless right now as to what middle class families are facing…..they just dont get it….

  2. adb67, you pretty much nailed it. The era where America races to elect the guy who embraces the purest form of conservative orthodoxy has passed. The dwindling ranks of purist ideologues like Jay Reding are watching in horror as their Fred Thompson yacht drifts further and further from the shoreline of mainstream America.

  3. And when the American people end up watching their retirement accounts become worthless, face an entitlement crisis that destroys the federal budget and ends up with a culture that’s openly hostile to raising a family, what then?

    What you people don’t get is that it isn’t about rhetoric, it’s about the future of this country.

    The further and further “mainstream America” drifts from its own founding principles the worse things will get.

    Sadly, it appears that this country will have to face a major crisis before the American people wake up. And maybe not then.

    Just because something is political popular doesn’t make it right any more than Justin Timberlake is a great artist because a bunch of teenage girls buy his crap.

  4. Jay, let me ask a question, what has the current administration done to enact policies that have benefited midle income Americans?

    How has No Child Left Behind benefited public schools? It has not, it has forced teachers to teach kids to pass standardized exams, not to actually learn anything useful.

    How has the President improved border security and ceased the flow of illegal immigrants? How has he garned respect and a workign relationship with nations around the world? he has not…..

    He has turned out to be one fo the worst presidents in american history…..he certainly is nothing like his father…

  5. “And when the American people end up watching their retirement accounts become worthless, face an entitlement crisis that destroys the federal budget”

    When Fred Thompson’s solution is, or rather was, cutting their retirement income by some 30% by reindexing Social Security benefits at price-based inflation margins, it’s hard for you to make a case for Americans to vote for your team on the grounds of creating a richer future for themselves.

    “ends up with a culture that’s openly hostile to raising a family, what then”

    Damn….you’re a Huckabee supporter after all. A bigger heap of chicken little platitudes I can’t recall hearing. And what better spokesman for cleaning up the “hostile” culture than the star of one of television’s most violent and gruesome series.

    “Sadly, it appears that this country will have to face a major crisis before the American people wake up.”

    The last refuge of those whose ideology has fallen out of favor is the “wake up America!” shrieking. It’s really sad that you’re reduced to this when your ideology still possesses ownership of two out of three branches of American government.

    I will say one good thing about Fred Thompson following his departure. In a bipartisan race full of patronizing nanny-staters all too eager to rain down tyrannical lifestyle mandates on the peasantry, Thompson was a rare voice of dissent. The inner-libertarian in me found Thompson the second least offensive candidate in the race relating to respecting individual lifestyle choices.

  6. And what better spokesman for cleaning up the “hostile” culture than the star of one of television’s most violent and gruesome series.

    Are you an idiot, or have you never actually watched “Law and Order?”

    —-

    Jay, let me ask a question, what has the current administration done to enact policies that have benefited midle income Americans?

    I’m not a fan of NCLB or the President’s immigration policies—mainly because in both cases he let Democrats like Ted Kennedy have a hand in developing both.

    However, under Bush the economy went from recession to an unprecedented period of economic growth. Millions of new jobs have been created. It’s funny, the media has spun the last few years as being terrible, but if I gave you a chart showing the economic measures of the last few years next to the same measures from the Clinton “boom” there’s no way you’d be able to tell them apart.

    All the fearmongering on the economy will look quite silly when things actually do get bad—which if the Democrats win this year, they will. There’s political rhetoric, and then there’s reality. No matter how much you take the same old discredited policies and claim they help the middle class, it won’t make them actually work.

  7. “Are you an idiot, or have you never actually watched “Law and Order?””

    I’ve seen enough to know that it fits into “hostile culture in which to raise a family” narrative. If you had school-age kids, would you let them watch it? Or hold its star up as a paragon of virtue…the one man who can save us from total cultural decay and the extinction of the American family’s survival?

  8. “However, under Bush the economy went from recession to an unprecedented period of economic growth. Millions of new jobs have been created. It’s funny, the media has spun the last few years as being terrible, but if I gave you a chart showing the economic measures of the last few years next to the same measures from the Clinton “boom” there’s no way you’d be able to tell them apart.”

    Let’s hold this arrogant statement up at Exhibit A of why the Republican Party is more unpopular in 2008 than at any time since Watergate. Aside from the stuffed-shirt elitism and it’s disconnect from middle-class and working-class reality, it stands in direct and obvious contrast with your celebratory rhetoric about how America benefits mightily when its largest employer is Wal-Mart.

    “All the fearmongering on the economy will look quite silly when things actually do get bad—which if the Democrats win this year, they will.”

    You may get your wish. Every indication is that the latest Republican recession is nearly upon us….and plenty of credible people are predicting into be perhaps the worst recession since the Great Depression, another calamity that ensued when free-market ideologues ran the world.

  9. I’ve seen enough to know that it fits into “hostile culture in which to raise a family” narrative. If you had school-age kids, would you let them watch it? Or hold its star up as a paragon of virtue…the one man who can save us from total cultural decay and the extinction of the American family’s survival?

    If I had school-age kids and they were watching a show that’s many boring procedural drama, I’d be wondering what was wrong with them.

    Let’s hold this arrogant statement up at Exhibit A of why the Republican Party is more unpopular in 2008 than at any time since Watergate. Aside from the stuffed-shirt elitism and it’s disconnect from middle-class and working-class reality, it stands in direct and obvious contrast with your celebratory rhetoric about how America benefits mightily when its largest employer is Wal-Mart.

    Last I checked, the Congress has an approval rating usually associated with slime eels, and it was the Democrats who were in charge of Congress.

    Typical Mark—whenever you don’t have anything interesting to say, you go straight for the hyperbole…

    BTW, the largest employer in the US is the federal government.

    The reason why you use numbers is because the numbers don’t lie. The media has sold a story of economic downturn that isn’t justified by much in the way of real facts. The biggest problem the average family faces is rising health care costs, and the Democrats will only make that worse. (Or, they’ll make it better by trading higher costs with telling Grandma that her kidney transplant will be performed sometime in the next 5 years, if she doesn’t kick the bucket first.)

    You may get your wish. Every indication is that the latest Republican recession is nearly upon us….and plenty of credible people are predicting into be perhaps the worst recession since the Great Depression, another calamity that ensued when free-market ideologues ran the world.

    Of course, it’s a Republican recession. Never mind that Democrats control Congress… also never mind that much of the growth in collateralized debt obligations (what’s causing the subprime mess) happened during the 1990s. But hey, since the left wing of the Democratic Party is now attacking the Clintons rather than defending them, you can even assign blame to the right person without all the Kos Kiddies making fun of you.

  10. Jay, i think the point is that for middle class american’s lie myself. our incomes are basically stagnant. I work for the largest telecom in America and we have been recieving across the board salary increases which are below the yearly cost of living……this is true in America in major corporations…I have friend who work in a variety of major industries at Fortune 100 companies……we are not seeing a bigger piece of the pie……as for jobs….high paying jobs just are not being created…

  11. Jay, i think the point is that for middle class american’s lie myself. our incomes are basically stagnant. I work for the largest telecom in America and we have been recieving across the board salary increases which are below the yearly cost of living……this is true in America in major corporations…I have friend who work in a variety of major industries at Fortune 100 companies……we are not seeing a bigger piece of the pie……as for jobs….high paying jobs just are not being created…

    The problem is that you’re getting paid more, but most of your paycheck is going into taxes and rising health care costs. It also depends heavily on where you live—a state that has high taxes takes a bigger bite out of your paycheck.

    There are high-paying jobs being created, but they’re not being created everywhere. Not surprisingly, jobs are getting created in places where there’s either a well-established infrastructure (Silicon Valley) or places that are luring employers in with low taxes and less regulatory burdens (Southern auto plants, North Carolina’s Research Triangle).

    If you want to increase people’s salaries, you have to not only grow the economy, but you have to reduce the costs of doing business. How many millions of dollars does your company spend to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley? That’s money that can no longer go to salaries and benefits. How many millions of dollars has your company paid out in legal settlements and legal fees? It’s undoubtedly in the millions—which is great for me, but not so much for you. How much have your health care premiums gone up? And then how much of that premium increase is going to offset the cost of regulation, malpractice suits, and lack of choice?

    There’s no doubt the middle class is getting shafted, but the problem is that they’re getting shafted by big government. Every time some harebrained scheme to regulate some industry comes up, that’s more money out of your pockets.

    In a time when countries like France and Ireland are liberalizing their economies, we’re going the wrong way—and if we keep going that way we’ll end up with double-digit unemployment, miniscule economic growth, and declining wages just as they did. There is a way to protect the interests of the middle class—and that is by getting the state off their back.

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