FREDERICK OF HOLLYWOOD BENDS OVER FOR ANYONE-- AS LONG AS THEY BRING PLENTY OF THE REALLY EXPENSIVE LUBE

Earlier this summer Republican lobbyist Fred Thompson was exposed as someone willing to sell his influence-- influence derived predominantly from the trust placed in him by Tennessee voters-- to the highest bidders. He seemed more than willing to sell out everything he claimed to have ever believed in-- if the price was right. And that included working for pro-abortion groups seeking to influence the Bush administration. He sold out his Tenneessee incumbents for a pittance. But now that he's running for the Republican nomination for president, we should ask ourselves if he would sell out America the same way he sold out Tennessee.

Today's NY Times makes it clear that he already has. Another shady, carefully concealed client of Frederick of Hollywood has reared it's head: Libya.

A little over three years after Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, Fred D. Thompson provided advice to a colleague about one of his law firm’s new clients: The man representing the two Libyan intelligence officials charged in the terrorist bombing... Revelations that American firms were representing Libyan interests provoked a furor among the Pan Am victims’ families. Some law firms refused to represent the country or the suspects, while others withdrew.

It has now been confirmed that Thompson's firm did not refuse the Libyan money ($833,960) and that Thompson himself, who has always managed to keep anyone from finding out about his lucrative terrorist connections, had no problem advising the mass murderers and sworn enemies of America.

Thompson has dodged questioners and done his best to mislead anyone trying to find out about his lobbying efforts on behalf of the abortion lobby, Jean-Betrand Aristide of Haiti, the Libyans, and illegal toxic waste dumpers who were poisoning families in Texas. Republicans thinking about voting for Thompson have to ask themselves if the man is even too much of a whore for the GOP.

Today Thompson is hysterical about fighting what he calls as "radical Islamic terrorism." It plays very well among the Know Nothing Republican base in low information places like rural South Carolina and Iowa, areas where people think he's a good ole boy.

Thompson has said he makes no apologies for his legal and lobbying work, emphasizing in one online essay that every person, no matter how unpopular, is entitled to representation and that lawyers’ work on behalf of a client is no indication of their own personal views.

Asked about Mr. Thompson’s participation in the Libya case, James Kreindler, a lawyer who represents 130 of the victims’ families, said: “Pan Am 103 was really an attack on the United States, so while some families understood the concept that everyone deserves a defense, a number were offended and angered that American lawyers were willing to earn fees by doing anything to help this pariah nation or the two bombing suspects.”

Despite Thompson's best efforts on behalf of his Libyan clients, they finally lost in 2003 and "accepted responsibility for the Pan Am bombing and agreed to pay the victims $2.7 billion in compensation." If Thompson were up against any reasonable competition, he wouldn't have a chance. But the field, dubbed "a pathetic bunch of pygmies"™ by Newt Gingrich, doesn't offer any outstanding alternatives. "None of the Above" wins every poll against the gaggle of Republicans seeking to continue the discredited policies of George Bush.

Giuliani, the most cutthroat of the aspirants, is the first on the attack against Thompson. According to today's Sunday Times says he will "contrast his experience as a welfare reformer, tax-cutter and crime-beater in America’s toughest city with Thompson’s record of having named a few post offices while he was a senator."

Adding to doubts about his managerial experience, Thompson has seen his campaign team rocked by half a dozen high-profile departures in the past month. Mark Corallo, who launched Thompson’s informal presidential bid last spring, resigned in frustration last week after another well-regarded colleague, Jim Mills, a former Fox News producer, was sidelined and quit.

Several appointees gave up good jobs to commit to Thompson and have been left high and dry, creating much ill-feeling. In contrast, Giuliani’s tightly knit team includes long-term aides who have worked with him since the 1990s. He is also bringing in advisers with strong links to Christian conservatives and the gun lobby, two powerful groups in the Republican party that are sceptical of Giuliani’s pro-choice record on abortion and his antigun policies in New York.

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee has called Frederick of Hollywood's bluff and challenged him to prove he's something more than an empty suit, an actor reading his lines, and-- in the end-- nothing more than another version of Jack Abramoff.

After 8 years of the disastrous, rapacious and incompetent Bush Regime, lead by an alcoholic flim flam man who replaced booze and cocaine with the last refuge of all scoundrels (and a belief in ghosts and other Bronze Age superstitions), there are some-- though not many-- who think the next president should be something like Bush without looking like Bush. Enter stage right: a gross old actor with no core values but with a well-honed skill for deception-- as well as a rapaciousness to rival Bush's, a promise of more incompetence, and a trademark laziness that would ensure the Bush program to bring America low will play out to its inevitable conclusion.

Those who remember Fred Thompson's years in Washington recall that the "slow pace of life on Capitol Hill manifestly bored him, and while others would slog selflessly through long nights of committee work, Fred was firmly of the 'let's wrap it up and go for a drink' persuasion."

One thing about Frederick of Hollywood's role as the GOP goat fighting Hillary: the Republican Party's hope to smear the Clinton's with tales of Bill Clinton's extramarital affairs will be neutralized by Thompson, whose boyhood shotgun wedding has been followed by a life's obsession with lust. "At an appearance before senior Republicans investigating possible skeletons in his closet, he declared: 'I was single for a long time. I got chased by a lot of women, and usually I got caught.'"