Fred Thompson EXPOSED

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/6/2/73340/65601 Mitt Romney has already out-raised his opponents by fulfilling the one true requirement of a Republican candidate -- looking presidential. But Romney is going to have to surrender his prom king crown to the guy who has been literally acting the part for decades. Fred Thompson has been a general in the Army, an admiral in the Navy, senator, White House chief of staff, head of the FBI, and president three times (hey, doesn't that make him ineligible?). And before all those, he played another role: attorney. Yes, Thompson really is both a lawyer and a Hollywood movie star -- the two things Republicans always claim to hate, until they start drooling over any example of either willing to tack an "R" after their name. But though he's made a career of playing a character whose name might as well be "Tough Butfair," there's one part of Thompson's act that's never quite held up to scrutiny. Thompson launched his political career as a "pro-choice moderate" in a contest against a conservative Democrat (a Democrat who found out that it was hard to achieve statewide name recognition when running against a guy who was on TV 24/7). Thompson was able to pass himself off as a down-home boy, driving around the state in a pickup truck, while every television station in the state did his work for him. But once elected, though he continued to use the "moderate" script on the air, Thompson's voting record in the Senate showed a very different tone to his performance. He scored a lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union of 86 percent -- one point shy of little Ricky Santorum. Only a handful of Senators (Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms among them) proved to be more more dedicated to pushing the hard right agenda. And then there's Thompson the author. In his first political position, Thompson was picked by Howard Baker to be chief minority council for the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, otherwise known as the "Watergate Committee." Nixon was barely in that helicopter before Thompson sat down to pound out a book giving his view of the events (you'll excuse me for not providing an Amazon link). The book takes a very interesting approach on Watergate. According to Thompson, Republicans were babes in the woods, believing Nixon to be totally innocent. On the other hand, Democrats were clearly hiding something. They'd made a pact with the traitor, John Dean, and lured Republicans into a trap. In the phrasing and tone of every question, Thompson saw that Democrats were "unfair." Thompson spends the middle of the book attacking Dean and the Democrats, before going back in time to highlight his investigation of Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt to prove that Watergate was nothing special. He then wanders into a long and convoluted account of how inside information passed to journalist Jack Anderson allowed Democrats to know about Watergate before it happened, turning all of Watergate into the biggest setup in history. Thompson reprised the role of Republican champion in 1996, when as chairman of the Senate Government Relations Committee he tried to extract vengeance for Watergate by heading up the investigation of "irregularities" in campaign fundraising. Despite a lot of fulminating at the beginning of this investigation, Thompson ended up fuming over his inability to find any fire behind all the Republican-generated smoke. He blamed his lack of success on Democrats who "have very, very little fear of lying" under oath. No matter what role he plays on TV, Thompson's voting record, and his written record, reveal a man who is a hard-right partisan, a man who actively hates Democrats, a man who thinks Sam Ervin was the real villain of the Watergate story, and a man whose own view of the world includes more conspiracies than any Hollywood plot. A Nixon apologist who sees the press and Democrats tangled in a scheme to hoodwink innocent Republicans -- Thompson really is the ideal candidate of the 28% crowd. It's little wonder that in his latest on screen role, Thompson was cast to play President Grant in the run up to the Wounded Knee Massacre. Representing the side of corruption and violence comes naturally to him. ::