Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Sleepwalking Through the Campaign: Thompson (Finally) Pulls the Plug

We've been predicting it for weeks and today, finally, the star-crossed presidential bid of former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson reached its logical end.

After many delays last summer and a slow start in Iowa, Thompson's campaign sputtered and never took off. The best he could do was a poor third-place finish in Saturday's South Carolina primary.

We'll be watching Fred's Sooner state supporters—Tulsa politicos and Oklahoma bloggers among them—to see who they will endorse now that their man Fred is history.

Will the former Baptist preacher
Mike Huckabee score some high-profile Oklahoma endorsements? Will Mitt Romney? Or will the so-called maverick Republican John McCain, endorsed by Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, make some new fans here?

Frankly, we don't see any way that Rudy Giuliani can succeed in Florida, much less Oklahoma, so we don't expect to see any local support for "the hero of 9/11," as he would like to be known.

Stand by your radios, ladies and gents, because things are getting more and more interesting.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My guess is that Huckabee will be Thompson's chief beneficiary here in Oklahoma.

I don't see how Mitt is ever going to fly with the religious right, unless he looks like an unbeatable candidate, which he doesn't.

McCain has taken an extended blog-beating here. He is the most electable candidate though, so I anticipate dangerous levels of cognitive dissonance before he is embraced.