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July 09, 2007

Fred Thompson Takes Another Hit

It hasn't been a good week for Fred Thompson. Today's news that he is denying well-founded claims that he lobbied on behalf of a pro choice group comes on top of a report that he tipped off the Nixon Whitehouse during the Watergate hearings to the fact that investigators knew about the tapes, but that Nixon was concerned that Thompson was "dumb as hell."

The L.A. Times is reporting that even though Thompson is today campaigning as an anti-abortion Republican, back in 1991 he accepted a lobbying assignment from the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. He agreed to urge the administration of President George H. W. Bush to ease up on restrictions on abortion counseling at clinics where federal funding was being used.

The abortion "gag rule" was then a major political flashpoint. Lobbying against the rule would have placed Thompson at odds with the antiabortion movement that he is now trying to rally behind his expected declaration of a presidential bid.

The issue is quickly turning into a "he said, she said" sort of argument, but the fact is the paper trail and eye witness accounts support the family planning group and not Thompson in this argument. Predictably, all Republicans involved "don't recall" Thompson's lobbying efforts and the party faithful believe this is nothing more than a left-wing plot to discredit him.

But if Thompson did not actually do the lobbying he told the group he was doing on its behalf, then he is in trouble for fraud. As one blogger points out, this is exactly what got Jack Abramoff in trouble.

Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff is serving over five years in federal prison for taking money from Native American tribes to lobby on their behalf and then doing the opposite.

Not that it will come to anything.

The danger in this early release of these two stories is that they will be smoothed over and forgotten by election day. After all, Americans were willing to elect a cocaine-using dry drunk who dodged the draft and went AWOL – twice. A "dumb" party loyalist who was smart enough to screw over a pro-choice group and who tried to protect his president back in the day could well be seen as a refreshing move back toward moral leadership.

Maybe it hasn't been such a bad week for ol' Fred after all.

Posted by Becky at July 9, 2007 12:15 PM