Day: September 6, 2007

Fred Thompson: The New Katherine Harris

Trish
Fred reaches for his campaign manager’s um, arm.

We’re only one day in, but it already looks like having Fred Thompson in the 2008 campaign is going to be fun!

In fact, Fred’s candidacy could be almost as entertaining as Katherine Harris’ 2006 run for the Florida senate. Katherine, you might recall, buzzed through staffers like so much termite-infested cord wood. In one historic day alone, four senior staff members walked out. By the end of her campaign, scores had either quit or been fired.

But Fred is already looking good for meeting or beating Katherine’s record.

Mark Corallo, a veteran of the Bush administration who had served as Thompson’s primary spokesman when the Tennessee Republican began exploring a bid earlier this year, has left the campaign, Corallo and several Thompson aides told CNN…

He is the fourth communications staffer to leave the Thompson campaign. The former Tennessee senator also replaced his campaign manager weeks before officially announcing Wednesday that he would run for the White House.

In Harris’ case, extreme bugginess was the likely cause of the turnover. Between claiming live footage from the 2000 presidential theft was doctored to make her appear more heavily made-up, or that only born-again Christians are fit to hold public office, or raiding her campaign funds for home renovations, it’s no wonder her first ex-campaign manager programmed his cell phone to play the theme from the Exorcist when Katherine called.

With Thompson, the rumored source of the turmoil is just as hard-wired into the campaign.

…Republicans are still trying to determine who is really calling the shots and how much power is held by Mrs. Thompson.

“It’s now become an open joke among people in the consultant community and political movers and shakers that the senator’s wife is really running the campaign,” said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster and strategist. “The spouse needs to be an integral part of the campaign but it is never a good thing when the spouse runs the campaign because the spouse is never objective.”

Thompson himself jokes about Jeri being in charge.

Speaking at his $1,000-a-ticket fund-raiser at the J.W. Marriott hotel in downtown Washington Monday night, Fred Thompson began by introducing “my campaign manager — oh, I mean my wife.”

If Thompson starts claiming Democratic office-holders secretly support him over their party’s eventual candidate, it’ll feel just like Harris is back. Fun!

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

To call women the weaker sex is a libel: it is man’s injustice to women. If by strength is meant brute strength, then indeed is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man would not be. If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with women.

— Mahatma Gandhi (1869-assassinated 1948), Hindu national leader

Former Loyal Bushie Bremmer Accuses Bush of Lying About Disbanding Iraqi Army

Jon Ponder

Pres. Bush has been accused of lying by a former loyal Bushie — Paul Bremmer, Bush’s viceroy in Iraq at the beginning of the U.S. occupation in 2003. The issue in dispute is who made the disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi Army after the American invasion. In “Dead Certain,” the new book on the Bush presidency by Robert Draper, Bush denies responsibility and blames Bremmer for disbanding the Iraqi military:

It will be interesting to see what Cheney has in store for Paul Bremmer, and whether a former loyal Bushie will get the same rough treatment as others who call this president out on his lies.

“The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen,” Bush told biographer Robert Draper in excerpts published in Sunday’s New York Times.

Draper pressed Bush to explain why, if he wanted to maintain the army, his chief administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, issued an order in May 2003 disbanding the 400,000-strong army without pay.

“Yeah, I can’t remember; I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ” Bush said, adding: “Again, Hadley’s got notes on all this stuff” — a reference to national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley.

Hadley may have notes but so does Bremmer. He has denied the president’s accusation in a column in the New York Times:

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