{"id":2007,"date":"2008-01-22T15:46:04","date_gmt":"2008-01-22T20:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2007"},"modified":"2008-01-22T15:46:04","modified_gmt":"2008-01-22T20:46:04","slug":"he-took-the-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2007","title":{"rendered":"He Took The Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fred Thompson is out.<\/p>\n

Cap’n Ed<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Thompson had a great voice for conservatives in the race, but he had the weakest track record. He only had eight years in the Senate, no executive experience, and a mixed voting record. As a presidential nominee facing either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, the inexperience factor would have been negated — perhaps the GOP’s greatest potential strength — and his reluctance to campaign as necessary in today’s political market would have put the Republicans at even more of a disadvantage. In those senses, Romney, Giuliani, and McCain have better credentials and more upside for November.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rated purely on the issues, Fred was my favorite Republican<\/a> (ergo, candidate) in the race, and the closest to a solid conservative.<\/p>\n

With two weeks until Super-Di-Duper Tuesday, my short list is looking like this:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Mitt and Rudy in a dead heat.\u00a0 I may need to re-score the grading (stay tuned), but at this point it’s a tossup for me.<\/li>\n
  2. JMac is in a distant third, but if he gets the nomination, he’s still vastly better than any <\/em>alternative from the left (even Bill Richardson, should he jump back into the race and somehow win the Tic nomination).\u00a0<\/li>\n
  3. The Hucker?\u00a0 Again – better than Madame Putin, Silkypony or Obie, but it’s not gonna be an issue.\u00a0 No way he comes out of Super-Di-Super Tuesday on his feet.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Thompson was a long-shot all along, and those of us who wanted a “real” <\/em>conservative should have known it – if not up-front, then as his campaign started slow and stayed somnambulent.<\/p>\n

    Blah.<\/p>\n

    So it becomes a choices of who’s “good enough”-enough; Rudy the hawk and fiscal conservative, Mitt the fiscal whiz and foreign-policy naif<\/em>, or JMac the conservative with the asterisk.<\/p>\n

    More later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Fred Thompson is out. Cap’n Ed: Thompson had a great voice for conservatives in the race, but he had the weakest track record. He only had eight years in the Senate, no executive experience, and a mixed voting record. As a presidential nominee facing either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, the inexperience factor would have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}