THOMPSON'S STUMBLING, BUMBLING CAMPAIGN... APPEALS TO REPUBLICANS

The latest polling numbers all show Thompson pulling ahead of Giuliani, having left Flip Flop Mitt, McCain and the rest of the pathetic pygmies™ in the dust. He was endorsed today by one of the extreme right-wing senators from Mississippi, Thad Cochran. All that has a lot more to do with the fact that he isn't Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Hunter, Huckabee, Tancredo or the other pygmies than with who he actually is.

Republican propagandist George Will writes today that his rollout was... rocky.

Fred Thompson's plunge into the presidential pool -- more belly-flop than swan dive-- was the strangest product launch since that of New Coke in 1985. Then, the question was: Is this product necessary? A similar question stumped Thompson the day he plunged.

Sean Hannity, who is no Torquemada conducting inquisitions of conservatives, asked Thompson: "When you look at the other current crop of candidates -- Republicans -- where is the distinction between your positions and what you view as theirs?" Thompson replied: "Well, to tell you the truth, I haven't spent a whole lot of time going into the details of their positions."

He also is unfamiliar with the details of his own positions. Consider his confusion the next day when talk radio host Laura Ingraham asked him about something he ardently supported -- the McCain-Feingold expansion of government regulation of political speech. His rambling, incoherent explanation was just clear enough to be alarming about what he believes, misremembers and does not know.

Is that his Reagan impersonation? George Will isn't the only right-winger wondering why Frederick of Hollywood is bothering to run. Bob Novak, another GOP propagandist, paints an even worse picture of what is looking an awful lot like a DOA campaign. He thinks Thompson has already turned off some major GOP power interests.

Thompson's late start is not in itself a fatal flaw. Still, it had been conceded in party circles that when Thompson finally became a candidate, his beginning needed to be memorable. It was not. While Thompson offered obligatory conservative slogans in New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina, he was not the white knight whom worried Republican loyalists desperately desire. His debut might have been more blood-stirring had his gatekeepers not turned away talented helpers.

Thompson's burial, nevertheless, is premature. The conditions persist that caused him, an actor supposedly finished with politics, to emerge suddenly in March as his party's potential savior. The leading Republican contestants -- Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain-- all have glass jaws in the view of neutral Republican Mike Murphy (though Murphy says Thompson does as well). The Republican electorate is still looking for the forceful, dynamic conservative many have thought Thompson might be.

Right-wingers in Florida today sure didn't see that in him. According to today's Palm Beach Post Thompson came to the Tampa area and showed he doesn't have a clue. When asked about a Republican base iconic question, he fumbled... badly. He said he has no opinion on the Terri Schiavo case.

“I don’t know the facts surrounding that case…That’s going back in history. I don’t remember the details of it,” Thompson said. In 2005, in an attempt to keep the brain-damaged Schiavo alive against the wishes of her husband and rulings by Florida courts, Congress voted to have federal courts review the case. Federal courts ultimately declined to intervene and Schiavo died a few weeks after the vote.

Thompson said that, in general, “local matters should be left to the locals,” but that he also has consistently supported “the sanctity of life.”

I guess if people think what we need in the White House is a forgetful grandpa rocking back and forth in a chair with a blanket over his knees, slowly fading away, they've found their man.