FRED THOMPSON vs MITT ROMNEY: WHO'S THE BIGGER FLIP FLOPPER?

Folks in Massachusetts have had a chance to watch Mitt Romney more closely than anyone else because they elected him governor. The nickname he earned says it all: Flip Flop Mitt. Romney is hard to take seriously because his positions are rooted in shifting sand and dependent on who his audience is at any given time. Now that he's trying to win the approval of the extremist loons and Know Nothings who firmly dominate the Republican presidential nomination process he has pandered to the right in such a way as to make himself unelectable to the general population.

To win the GOP nomination, a candidate is required to make narrow ideological appeals that will guarantee his defeat in the general election. When Arnold Schwarzenegger attempted to open the California Republican nominating process up to independent voters, the way Democrats have, the state party hierarchy reacted with horror and voted him down. The kooks and loons will take nothing less than a mirror image, a loony kook. And all the Republican candidates are delighted to go pander to the most base instincts of the lower common denominator among the racists, xenophobes, religionist fanatics, obsessed homophobes, Islamophobes, brainwashed victims of Fox and Hate Talk Radio who make up the base of the modern Republican Party. They all do it but, until now, no one has been more willing to jump into the river of pig swill and drink more heartily than Romney. Until now. Enter GOP actor/lobbyist Fred Thompson.

Thompson's high-priced advisers have him following an identically suicidal path. His confused and nuanced political record is not what the hard core base in Iowa and South Carolina wants to think about. They want simple one line answers to their problems, answers that have been drilled into their heads by Limbaugh and Hannity and O'Reilly, answers that fit on bumperstickers and that have now come into general disrepute among the 70% plus of Americans who disapprove of the job the Bush Regime is doing. Fred Thompson's past support-- even if it was just the support a mercenary gives a client and not something he felt in his heart (which, in essence is what he's now claiming)-- for abortion-rights is not the kind of thing the Republican base feels good about.

Not even officially in the race yet, Thompson is already earning a reputation as a flip flopper and panderer to rival Romney's. And with Gingrich claiming that if Thompson runs, he probably won't... "None of the Above" will continue to be the front-runner in the GOP presidential race.





UPDATE: WHY THIS MATTERS

One of these galoots will have to get his ass kicked from Caribou, Maine to San Diego, California by an ex-first lady. With McCain thinking about hitchhiking to campaign events to save money on the bus fare, Alex Gage from Romney's campaign is out this weekend pushing their perspective that Giuliani is following McCain right down the same toilet. This is what passes for humor in the Mormon camp:

Romney is clearly making a play at front-runner status, figuring that if he can establish himself atop the heap, Thompson and Giuliani will fight it out for the chance to be one of the last two standing. Gage asserts that Thompson and Giuliani "may be competing for the same pool of voters" judging by Thompson's ascent in the polls, and he adds a line from Romney media consultant Alex Castellanos: "If Rudy is the tough mayor of New York, Fred is the guy they would hire to play Rudy on TV."