Final Thoughts on Fred and the MRLC

Sunday was the last day of the conference.

I wrote this post during the day on Sunday, but I had to head out for home in southern Indiana (it was a beautiful day for the drive, I must say) before I could post it, and I didn’t get it posted last night because I was working on something else.

Better late than never.

Congressman Thad McCotter (MI-11) spoke for breakfast and gave a good talk, and several workshops on topics as varied as fundraising and renewable energy followed.

Congressman Steve Buyer (IN-4) spoke at lunch; if he doesn’t have a touch of something greater in him like a Senate bid (insomuch as serving in the Senate can be considered greater), I would be surprised.

Buyer told some pretty amusing stories, and related various outrages perpetrated by the Democrats since they took power, going—as he put it—from minority to monarchy.

Some of those incidents were things like the infamous stolen vote on the House floor that I had heard about, and others—like a move to cut veterans’ benefits—were things that I had not (but will be blogging about sometime soon after I look into them further).

The story from last night that seems to be percolating in the Washington media is that Thompson was “sober and somber” even bordering on gloomy.

I would not go that far; Thompson clearly owned the room from the moment he entered until the moment he left.

More on that, and some inside baseball about a ground team faux pas after the leap.

That being said, the crowd that mobbed Fred Thompson when he came into the room and started shaking hands was excited for Fred.

The crowd that applauded through the speech—despite giving him a standing ovation longer than that seen by any other candidate at the conference—did not get that excitement from Fred.

He did not throw them red meat and did not rest his speech on the old standbys.

He did not attack the Democrats much; for example, I think he was the only one of the three candidates that did not mention Hillary Clinton (if he did he didn’t dwell on her long).

It has been said before by countless people, and dismissed by Thompson partisans, but I think that Thompson clearly has an excitement gap.

Much has been made of Fred Thompson as some sort of southern-fried Reagan.

Like Reagan, he is a sort of “intellectual conservative.”

Reagan was—as John Gizzi said when the Greg, Josh, and I talked to him when we were at the Speedway waiting for the thunderstorm to pass after Romney spoke—an addict to the conservative magazine Human Events.

Ronald Reagan reasoned himself into every position he held, which made it easy for him to reason himself into new positions; an unusual thing for someone heralded as a conservative ideologue.

Thompson spoke of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in his speech.

He delved into topics like federalism, things that not exactly something you ever expect to hear in a stump speech.

You can see a lot of that Reaganesque “intellectual conservative” in Fred Thompson.

Reagan had gravitas, presence, and charisma; he was the Great Communicator and he owned every room he entered.

You can see some of that in Thompson.

He entered the room from the back and worked his way through the crowd; had they not made him sit down so the event could get started he probably would have shaken hands or taken photos with everyone in the room.

Most people in that room wanted that; there were more people at that event than attended the conference at large, as you could buy stand-alone tickets to it.

Thompson wandered from the podium; the only reason he did not roam the stage the entire time was that the room was not fitted with a roaming spotlight, so he was in the shadows if he went too far.

He spoke with only limited notes; Romney’s delivery was canned and mechanical (and still mangled things like the name of the event and the name of RV 1).

Thompson, however, lacks fire.

Ronald Reagan had fire, as demonstrated by things like the incident in 1980 with the famous, “I paid for this microphone” line when opponents tried to mute his mike at a Republican presidential candidate forum in New Hampshire.

You won’t get something like that from Thompson.

He didn’t address his opponents and he didn’t speak about the Democrats save in the broadest of terms.

If the speeches by Romney and Huckabee contained red meat, Thompson was almost a vegetarian by comparison.

Republicans are gloomy, and Thompson acknowledges that.

But it is my opinion that the Republican base wants a fighter.

They want someone with zeal.

They want a winner.

Thompson doesn’t seem to have that fight in him, or that zeal.

Maybe he does, but he’s just waiting to roll it out when he’s finally a declared candidate.

So far, though, he hasn’t done it.

I think that hurts him.

The Republicans in that room waiting for Fred Thompson saw him as their white knight riding to their rescue.

I think it is unlikely that his speech (thoughtful and agreed-with as it was) did a lot to perpetuate that opinion among those who spent the entire weekend looking forward to seeing him speak.

He didn’t fall flat, but the hype about him has become so large—even with his announcement delays and so forth—that it would be hard for him to live up to it no matter what he did.

There is also the matter of the mistakes made by his ground team before the event.

Folks at the Indiana Republican Party are going to be mad at me for posting this.

Word of it spread, though, and people were chattering about it.

When you asked folks from state party about it, they claimed to know nothing, almost like Sergeant Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes; “I know nothing, nothing!”

I thought long and hard before doing including this; it’s esoteric inside baseball, but mistakes were made and they need to be addressed.

A series of fundraising receptions were held before the dinner.

Depending on how much you paid, you went to a reception with Thompson where you could shake his hand to a reception with Thompson where you could get your photo taken with him; the usual sort of thing.

Governor Daniels was present—despite endorsing McCain—at the high tier one, among other notable Republicans (like Steve Buyer and Dan Burton).

Members of the Republican state committee for Indiana were allowed into this reception, presumably as a courtesy to top GOP people from the host state.

They were allowed in, but were later escorted (thrown is the word I heard several people use later) out of the reception because apparently there was a miscommunication and they were not supposed to be allowed into the room in the first place.

It is my guess they were supposed to have been let into the other reception instead.

At least one of the state committee members went straight from being tossed out of the reception to the Romney booth and asked (loud enough to be overheard) “Where do I sign up?”

The Governor followed the state committee members from the reception; he did not stay around either once they were being shown the door.

There were a lot of bruised egos and angry state party bigwigs after this slip-up.

Maybe those people shouldn’t have been allowed through the door to the high tier reception, but they certainly should never have been thrown out after they were in there, certainly not given who they were.

The Senator may have some letters to write to some angry Hoosier Republican insiders soon.

Anyway, it is my understanding that this incident threw the Thompson people off their stride, and may have contributed to why the Thompson press conference (held just after the fundraiser reception) was so short; they may have felt the need to pull back and regroup, I don’t know.

That fumbling by his ground team aside, Thompson put on a powerful show at dinner, at least for those in the audience.

I was later told by someone that watched the speech on C-SPAN in order to have “emotional detachment” from it that it was much gloomier on the tube than it was in person.

If that’s true (and I can’t judge it myself, since I was there and think back to that when I see it replayed), then Thompson could have another problem; you would think that he would play even better on television than he does in person.

I give him three out of five stars, and I am still shopping for my candidate.