Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire
 

I heart Charles Pierce
 

• The success or failure of Fred Dalton Thompson's campaign for president will depend ultimately on the cornpone novelization of him that's already under way. (Chris Matthews has grown quite damp.) The guy was a not-very-distinguished senator, who quit because senatorin' was too damn hard, a skirt-chasing Washington lawyer, and a movie actor. Period. His resumé makes him out to be approximately as macho a figure as Clark Clifford or Alger Hiss. His politics, where they can be puzzled out at all, are almost resolutely More Of The Same, The Same being those policies rejected (in one obvious case) by up to 70 percent of the American people.
  
  Therefore, all of the earnest speculation about his manly-man appeal to the base is based on how much utter bulls**t the man can sling between now and the first primary. He's a performance piece, nothing more. There isn't an ounce of authenticity to him that isn't storebought. He actually is the complete fake that the Cool Kids pretended Al Gore was in 2000. He's even from Tennessee and, it is said, he once dated cute li'l Maggie Carlson, the chipmunk-cheeked lightweight in the moonman glasses who once famously thought Gore was talkin' too smart for the likes of her vaporous self.
  
  Ain't got to worry about none of that with ol' Fred, missy. He talks to you straight -- at $700 an hour. He can speak to The Base? Wonderful. Speaking To The Base is what sent this party up on the rocks in the first place. The best chance he has is if the elite political media will create for him a character he can play on the national stage, the way Dick Wolf let him nearly ruin Law and Order over the past three years. I can't think of a presidential candidate in recent years whose actual life and career is so far removed from the stage-managed image his handlers and their enablers will project on a country they firmly believe is too stupid to know that it's being played.
  
  Oh, wait.
  
  Yes I can.
  
  p.s. -- And here is Exhibit A already. Note that the artful fakery begins right there after ol' Cornpone's name. He "will offer himself as a down-home antidote to Washington politics." (Hey, Michael and Dan, whose home is Fred "down"? Yours?) Ah, to look at the country and see such a nation of suckers. The guy was a lobbyist for 18 years. He'll be a lobbyist again five seconds after either his campaign or (god forbid) his administration ends. If it weren't for "Washington politics," he'd be hustling the Oak Ridge Boys for their representation. If A Face In The Crowd isn't already in every reporter's NetFlix queue, it ought to be.
  
  p.p.s. -- Oh, if you're planning on being a down-home antidote to Washington politics, your first move probably shouldn't be hiring a corruptly appointed U.S. Attorney whose only real talent appears to be in oppo research and vote suppression. Just sayin'.
  
  p.p.p.s -- How easy will it be for Cornpone to dazzle the rubes? Read this transcript and gaze in awe as Howie Fineman tells Alison Stewart how he can read John McCain's "secret language" as to how terrible it is that McCain was forced to whore himself out to the part of his party that thinks Bill O'Reilly is a public intellectual. I swear, you could make a fortune selling these guys bagsful of magic beans.

linkeroo

three days late
 

I keep forgetting that my "Ignore" feature only works if I'm logged in.

S_A_M

three days late
 

he did raise one very good question. legal was about to make me the mod on the old spanky board, so I am qualified.

three days late
 

diría "dos!!", pero robaste mi calcetín en el otro lugar! Usted esta el famban barretoso!

I heart Charles Pierce
 

Interesting smear job.

Pray tell, how does the author feel about Senator "I have less experience in Washington than a 20 year old staffer" Barack Obama?

I heart Charles Pierce
 

I don't know about Pierce, but one of Sully's readers says:

• Just something I found interesting. Barack Obama's candidacy has been criticized because of his lack of governmental experience. He spent about 8 years as an Illinois state senator and will, by '08, have spent almost 4 years in the U.S. Senate.
  
  What about Fred Thompson? He doesn't get the "lack of experience" criticism, but he was in the Senate for only about 8 years - he filled the last 2 years of Gore's term, and then had one full term of his own. Other than this, he's never been elected to anything. He was an assistant US Attorney for 3 years and served about a year as an attorney for a Congressional committee investigating Watergate.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...on_obama_.html

Good Press
 

Nice eloquent puff piece.

Translation: Unlike those cracker-ass-crackers with their country club bullshit, homie keeps it real on the court.

I heart Charles Pierce
 

So, according to this guy, Thompson spent 8 years as a US Senator. Not exactly Kennedyesque - but substantial.

But who is he kidding - Obama has spent 1 year as a US Senator, and now 2 years on the campaign trail.

These comparisons are silly.

I heart Charles Pierce
 

He's been a White House Chief of Staff and an Air Traffic Control chief, not to mention a rear Admiral and the Director of Central Intelligence AND the District Attorney for New York City. No experience. Hmph.

Vote Fraud
 

It really does exist!

• (AP) Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has refused to cooperate in an investigation about whether she voted in the wrong precinct, so the case will likely be turned over to state prosecutors, Palm Beach County's elections chief said Wednesday.
  
  Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson said his office has been looking into the matter for nearly nine months, and he would turn over the case to the state attorney's office by Friday.
  
  Coulter's attorney did not immediately return a telephone message Wednesday and her telephone number in Palm Beach is unpublished. A message left for Tara Gilbride, a publicist for Coulter's publisher, The Crown Publishing Group, owned by Random House Inc., was also not immediately returned.
  
  Anderson's office received a complaint in February that Coulter allegedly voted in the wrong precinct during a Feb. 7 Palm Beach town council election. Since then, Anderson said he has made repeated attempts to resolve the matter with Coulter and her attorney but has been rebuffed.
  
  Anderson, a Democrat, said an initial letter was sent to Coulter on March 27 requesting that she clarify her address for the voting records "or face the possibility of her voter registration being rescinded."
  
  Three more letters were sent to Coulter and her attorney over the next several months, but she has yet to respond with the information requested, Anderson said.
  
  In July, Anderson said, he received a letter from Coulter's attorney, Marcos Daniel Jimenez D'Clouet. The letter said the attorney would only discuss the matter in person or by telephone because he complained Anderson had given details to the media. Anderson said the matter had to be discussed in writing.
  
  Knowingly voting in a wrong precinct is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison, said Mike Edmondson, a spokesman for the state attorney's office in West Palm Beach.
  
  Edmondson said his office generally reviews such cases, then turns them over to local authorities for a full investigation that could result in an arrest if intent is proven.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/...r=HOME_2143882


I'm sure the Gonzales Justice Department will vigorously investigate.

Vote Fraud
 

How utterly interesting that of all the votes in Palm Beach County, they chose to challenge hers.

Curious to see out how many other voters were "investigated" by Anderson.

Vote Fraud
 

I wonder how many others tried to pass off their realtor's address as their own?

Whatever happened to respect for the Rule of Law?

Vote Fraud
 

I bet they investigate all people about whom individual complaints are received. Just. Guessing. Unfortunately, people in the public eye are (a) more likely to have someone bitch and (b) more likely to have it reported on.

Vote Fraud
 

Karl Rove on April 7, 2006:

• I want to thank you for your work on clean elections. I know a lot of you spent time in the 2004 election, the 2002, election, the 2000 election in your communities or in strange counties in Florida, helping make it certain that we had the fair and legitimate outcome of the election. We have, as you know, an enormous and growing problem with elections in certain parts of America today. We are, in some parts of the country, I'm afraid to say, beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where they guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored sunglasses. I mean, it's a real problem, and I appreciate that all that you're doing in those hot spots around the country to ensure that the ballot -- the integrity of the ballot is protected, because it's important to our democracy….
  
  The Democrats seem to want to make this year an election about integrity, and we know that their party rests on the base of election fraud.