Where ya going, Fred
After this weekends Third Place finish in South Carolina, Fred has gone home and to visit his mother. Some are saying that this is a signal that Fred Dalton Thompson will be withdrawing soon. I do not believe so, and I seriously hope not.
I even sent him another chunk of change this weekend to show that I still want him to go for it.
McCain owes his win in SC to Fred, who drew upwards of 20% of the smart evangelical vote away from Huckabee The Christian Socialist in a large number of locations. Without Thompson, McCain would have likely finished a very close second to Huckabee in a state where McCain’s supporters were playing him off as the martyr of the 2000 primaries.
I don’t get the chance to vote for Fred until the middle of February, and even if he withdraws before then I will cast my ballot in his favor since I cannot drop my conscience far enough to vote for any of the other bastards on the ballot.
What I could possibly vote for in the general in November, though I’m not settled on it, would be this: If McCain recognizes that he owes Fred big-time for maintaining McCain’s viability and enters into a gentleman’s agreement in which Thompson is given the Veep slot in exchange for his help in securing the nomination by drawing votes away from the rest of the pack and Fred giving his delegates to McCain.
I say this because McCain has enough to beat Hillary (or Obama) but he is older than Reagan was in 1981, and I don’t expect him to make it through two terms (and maybe not even one whole term). Also, Huckabee is the only other candidate besides Fred that stands a chance at winning the southern states in a national election, and I don’t want Huckabee any closer to the White House than he was two months ago.
Romney currently leads the field with nearly twice the number of delegates of McCain and more than twice the number of delegates of Huckabee. McCain needs the bodies taken from Huckabee that Fred will garner to both knock Huckabee out of the race and beat Romney under the auspices of a brokered convention.
The race is still wide open and likely will still be a guesser after Super Tuesday. Which is fourteen days before I get to vote for Fred Thompson in the Washington State Primary.
Yes, it sucks. No, I don’t like it, and no, I haven’t fully settled on that as an option yet either. But I’ve wished in one hand and Romney/Huckabee’d in the other. Guess which one is currently more full?
Seeing as how my whimsical immediately post-high school days are long gone and I can’t vote for the Hand in Glove Party on the Morrissey/Marr ticket, my only other option is Death of Life Party and the Cthulhu/Danzig ticket.
The same results as an Hillary or Obama win, but involves much less waiting.
I’ve got an email into the Washington Secretary of State’s office verifying I can cameraphone pic my ballot to prove my vote.
