Tuesday’s Top Pick 3 - Round 1
3rd Place: GOP3: ‘Who is Fmr Senator (Possibly President) Fred Thompson’
Who is Fmr Senator (Possibly President) Fred Thompson?
Lately, I have been seeing this former Senator from Tennessee’s name popping up all over the blogosphere as a possible Presidential candidate. He appeared today on Fox News and even has a fan site dedicated to him (DraftFredThompson.com) that is quickly picking up steam as over 11,000 people have visited this week alone. Who is he? And why do so many true blue conservatives want to see him run?
For starters, his voting record speaks for itself, the man has voted almost 100% conservative, the few votes he made that I wouldn’t have made as a conservative are obviously congruent with minute differences of opinion on how corporations should be involved in the political process (I think they should be allowed to make large contributions, etc). From the roll call perspective on given issues, he looks golden. Who is he though? He is a quick excerpt from his Wikipedia Bio:
Born in Sheffield, Alabama, Thompson grew up attending the public schools in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. He first attended the University of North Alabama and then Memphis State University where he earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy and political science in 1964. He received a J.D. degree from Vanderbilt University Law School in 1967. He was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1967 and commenced the practice of law, serving as an assistant U.S. attorney from 1969–1972. He was the campaign manager for Senator Howard Baker’s successful re-election campaign in 1972, which led to a close personal friendship with Baker, and he served as co-chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee in its investigation of the Watergate scandal, (1973–1974).
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On November 8, 1994, Thompson was elected to the United States Senate to fill the unexpired portion of the term ending January 3, 1997, left vacant by the resignation of Al Gore, defeating six-term Democratic U.S. Representative Jim Cooper in a landslide which represented the most votes anyone had ever received for a statewide office in Tennessee history up to that point. Thompson took the oath of office on December 2, 1994. Almost immediately upon his arrival in Washington, D.C. (”while I was still unpacking my boxes,” as he put it), Thompson was selected by the Republicans to give a reply to a nationally-televised address by President Bill Clinton. This was no doubt due to his acting background, but many pundits saw this as an attempt to groom him for an even larger political role. Thompson was easily re-elected in 1996 for the term ending January 3, 2003 over Democratic attorney Houston Gordon of Covington, Tennessee by an even larger margin than that by which he had defeated Cooper two years earlier. His name was regularly mentioned in the year 2000 as a potential candidate for Vice President alongside the Republican Presidential nominee George W. Bush.
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Thompson was not a candidate for re-election in 2002. He had never planned to make a lifetime career of the Senate, and had often publicly stated as much. Although he announced in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks his intention to seek re-election, upon further reflection, which seems to have been prompted in large part by the sudden death of his daughter from unrelated events, he decided not to pursue this course. In the final months of his term, he joined the cast of the long-running NBC television series Law & Order, playing Arthur Branch. In doing so, he became the first serving U.S. Senator concurrently to hold a full-time television acting job; however, his first scenes as Branch were filmed during the Senate’s August 2002 recess, so he missed no legislative time in order to act on television.
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After the retirement of Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2005, he was given an informal position by President George W. Bush to help guide the nominated John Roberts to the confirmation through the United States Senate.
After seeing his interview with Fox News and these ads he did for Citizens United (HT: Brookfield Veteran and Blogger Pete Fanning), I think he definitely has the speaking ability (hmm, what other actor/Republican did so well in office?) to lead a great conservative campaign.
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