Fred Thompson for President

Fred Thompson came alive in last night's Fox News debate. At long last, he attacked former Gov. Huckster-bee's record and positions, and I must admit that he had me cheering. Pollster Frank Luntz conducted a focus group of South Carolina Republicans who intend to vote in the January 19 primary. Before the debate, only three of the 28 group members supported Thompson; afterward, the big majority said that the former Tennessee senator won the faceoff.

This morning David Shuster said on MSNBC that Thompson was running interference for Sen. John McCain. What a crock! Thompson got into the race because there was no authentic conservative running who had a chance of winning. It won't be easy, but if Thompson does well in South Carolina, he may then be on his way to winning the nomination. You can never tell: Mississippi's March 11 presidential primaries could actually have some meaning.

Human Events was a major influence in the formation of my own political philosophy. As a teenager, I used my paper route earnings to pay for my first subscription to this great publication. From the get-go, I devoured each issue as soon as it arrived.

by Human Events | January 11, 2008

The 2008 presidential election is the most unusual and most important in many years. It’s been more than five decades since such a race didn’t feature an incumbent President or Vice President. Since World War II, America has not had a presidential election at a time when the stakes were higher. Conservatives have to win this election, and to do so, we have to identify a candidate around whom we all can rally.

Fundamental Beliefs

We begin by recalling the profound words of Ronald Reagan at the Conservative Political Action Conference Feb. 15, 1975: “A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers.” We believed that then, and we believe it now. The issue for us -- and for the conservative community -- boils down to which of the candidates is most representative of the fundamental conservative principles we believe in. The answer is Fred Thompson.

To reach that conclusion, we looked closely at the former Tennessee senator and his opponents to judge whether they measure up to conservative standards. Some come close, and others clearly do not.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona is a war hero whose personal courage sustained many of the men imprisoned with him in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.” We honor him, but he does not honor many conservative principles. His co-authorship of the Bush-McCain-Kennedy “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation last summer ran directly against our principles of American sovereignty and national security. His position has not been ameliorated by his more recent explanations of border-security measures he might support. His opposition to the Bush tax cuts, his support for economy-strangling measures to control “global warming” and his anti-torture legislation (which didn’t make torture illegal, it already was: McCain’s law only made a clear law vague to the point of unenforceability) all cut against the conservative grain. And so did his McCain-Feingold campaign finance law with its stifling of political free speech.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is a charming and agreeable gentleman. But his support for the economically disastrous “cap-and-trade” fix for global warming is as bad as Sen. McCain’s position on the...Keep reading>>>