Fred Thompson - Are you seriously this dumb?

So like I said yesterday, on Sunday night we had a nice long discussion about politics. One of the things we discussed at length was the current presidential candidates. One of my big issues is that I like ZERO of the current front runners in EITHER party. For the Democrats: Hilrod - kill me now, Obama - ick, Edwards - highly doubt it but the lesser of those 3 evils, then for the Republican party: Guilliani - kill me again, Thompson - a homeless mans Ronald Regan, Mitt Romney - democrat in red clothing, and McCain - possible but boy is he old.

My favorite candidates are actually all underdogs right now, I like Mike Huckabee and could vote for him if he was on a ticket and my top candidate right now is Ron Paul. While discussing this everyone else was like "Ron Paul is crazy!" and honestly, I am not sure where that is coming from. He is VERY outspoken about certain things, but honestly he lines up on more issues with me than anyone else. He is the only republican who voted AGAINST the war, instead pointing out that we should figure out why these people hate us (treat the root cause approach to foreign policy, not reaction to the symptoms approach that everyone else has). He is VERY strong on fiscal responsibility not just on the top level of government (he wants to abolish the IRS, and then to "pay for it" he would reduce government spending back to only 2000 level spending levels, not exactly impossible) but he also is very high on state and local government fiscal responsibility. This means things like a voucher system for schools, abolish the war on drugs (since he argues [and I agree with] the government can't make you be a better person, and leave that job up to friends, family and churches to handle), and many other issues I line up with.

But the facts are, Ron Paul won't win the republican nomination, which is sad. He accomplished a pretty impressive feat the other day, when he raised 1.2 million dollars in 6 days from online donations from regular citizens. 1.2 million dollars sure is a nice amount of cash on hand to run a campaign... but then you read the fiscal reports for other candidates. Mitt Romney donated 9 million dollars to himself last quarter alone for his campaign... and that has only bought him 3rd place! Unless Ron Paul is really able to mobilize this large internet base he has cultivated (no other candidate in my mind has tapped into the internet culture more than Ron Paul) he doesn't stand a chance against the big boys who will buy 30-60 second commercial spots, hire hundreds of students to do direct dialing and bug people at home, and canvas areas with large rallies and door fliers and staked signs. All those things cost money, and sadly in the US today the candidates with the most money has a huge leg up on everyone.

So now that I have gone off on Ron Paul for long enough, back to my original reason for making this post, Fred Thompson.

On Sunday I was told that Fred Thompson was the only true "conservative" in the Republican party. First of all I think Mike Huckabee is every bit as "conservative" (I will give you that Guilliani and Romney are both quite left leaning) as Thompson, and honestly Ron Paul is so conservative I would say he is off scale right and slid over to "libertarian" (which is what I would classify myself).

But I am starting to wonder if "conservative" has taken on a new meaning. I used to classify myself as a conservative, but I think that the definition of that has changed. It used to be someone who was for strong traditional morals and fiscal responsibility.

Under the Bush administration I think they have twisted conservative to mean big government spending to private contractors who screw us over (Blackwater RE-SIGNED for $92 million in Iraq security!, Haliburton moving to UAE) and complete cluelessness about anything with a pulse knows about (examples too long to list).

It seems Fred Thompson has taken the 2nd part of that definition in that he can't remember Terri Schiavo(they did a whole Law and Order episode on it!) and now the big kicker today, Fred Thompson still thinks there were WMD's in Iraq! So we have established that much like Bush 2, Fred Thompson is completely clueless about current political issues. Throw on top of that that he supports same sex marriage and lobbied to ease federal abortion restrictions and we combine someone with the intelligence of GW with the moral compass of a left wing nutjob (no offense meant to left wing nutjobs). If this is the new definition of "conservative" you can consider me out.

This just further confirms that I am right to start contemplating viewing myself as a Libertarian, not a Republican. Now if we could only get a couple more hundred million people to join the Libertarian party and we might have something going!