Thompson picks Abraham

You’re Fred Thompson. As a former U.S. senator you had a pleasant and lucrative career acting in a tv show. Then an opening unexpectedly appeared in the contest for the GOP nomination, because there were no candidates acceptable to conservatives. The most important issue to conservatives was immigration. You made a few general statements indicating a readiness to enforce our country’s immigration laws and guard its borders. These comments immediately translated into significant popular support and turned you into a viable prospect for the Republican nomination, even though you had not formally declared your candidacy. Then you appointed as your campaign manager former U.S. senator Spencer Abraham from Michigan. Abraham is most famous as an arrogant open-borders fanatic in his work as chairman of the Senate immigration sub-committee in the late 1990s. He was so bad on immigration that in 2000 Michigan conservatives and Republicans voted for Spencer’s challenger, pro-abortion liberal Democrat Debbie Stabenow, in order to drive Spencer from the Senate. Abraham lost his Senate seat because of his commitment to open borders, pure and simple.

Are you not aware that it was your statements on immigration that, mild as they were, gave you a shot at the presidency? Are you not aware that immigration restrictionists loathe Abraham as an open-borders true-believer, and that your appointment of him as your most important staff person throws into doubt your main selling point as a candidate? Did you have a reason for doing this, or are you just thick?

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Charles G. writes:

It gets worse. Some of the Bush family are also behind him, specifically one of Jeb Bush’s half Hispanic brood. I warned my friends who were excited about a Thompson candidacy that they should carefully watch who lines up for him to find out what he would really be like. I think we’re getting a pretty good idea.

Dan R. writes:

As a Michigan resident I voted for Mark Forton (the Constitution Party candidate) in 2000, and not Stabenow, but several weeks ago I was glad Stabenow was there to vote against the amnesty bill, and not Spencer Abraham, who I’m almost certain would have voted in favor of it.

David B. writes:

My high school math teacher, who knew Thompson and his first wife, told me yesterday that Thompson wasn’t considered very bright by his high school teachers. In his senior year, Thompson received the school’s athletic award. The teachers insisted that it be revoked because of Fred’s poor grades.

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From a 2006 interview with Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes (no link):

FRED THOMPSON: Tough problem. But, you know, because we allowed ourselves to wait until we woke up one day and found 12 million illegals here, there’s no easy solution. And I think that you have to realize that you’re either going to drive 12 million people underground permanently, which is not a good solution.

You’re going to get them all together and get them out of the country, which is not going to happen. Or you’re going to have to, in some way, work out a deal where they can have some aspirations of citizenship, but not make it so easy that it’s unfair to the people waiting in line and abiding by the law.

So Thompson was supporting amnesty.

Also, the following is a partial transcript of the March 11, 2007, edition of “FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace:

WALLACE: Well, let me put up on the screen something that you said last year about illegals, and let’s take a look at it. “You’re going to have to, in some way, work out a deal where they can have some aspirations of citizenship but not make it so easy that it’s unfair to the people waiting in line and abiding by the law.”

Now, you said, “Look, it’s just not realistic that we’re going to round up 12 million people and ship them all out of the country.”

THOMPSON: Well, that’s true, as a general statement. We woke up one day after years of neglect and apparently discovered that we have somewhere between 12 million and 20 million illegal aliens in this country. So it became an impossible situation to deal with.

I mean, there’s really no good solution. So what do you do? You have to start over. Well, I’m concerned about the next 12 million or 20 million. So that’s why enforcement, and enforcement at the border, has to be primary.

I think most people feel disillusioned after 1986 when we had this deal offered to them before, and now we’re insisting that, you know, we solve the security problem first, and then we’ll talk about what to do with regard to other things—certainly no amnesty or nothing blanket like that.

But figure out some way to make some differentiation between the kind of people that we have here.

You know, if you have the right kind of policies, and you’re not encouraging people to come here and encouraging them to stay once they’re here, they’ll go back, many of them, of their own volition, instead of having to, you know, load up moving vans and rounding people up. That’s not going to happen.

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Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 24, 2007 06:11 PM | Send