Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:
* Fred Thompson made a campaign appearance in South Carolina yesterday, and received a warm welcome from a far-right audience, though activists apparently left the event unconvinced. Asked “what do you believe in,” and about his “underlying principles,” Thompson said, “We can aspire to wonderful things.” Said one would-be supporter, “We drove an hour and a half to get here, and he didn’t say anything new.”
* Rudy Giuliani told Pat Robertson’s CBN that he was poised to become a priest, but changed his mind. “Frankly, in the Catholic Church, the vow of celibacy was something I wasn’t sure I could keep,” Giuliani said. Given his three marriages and adulterous affairs, Giuliani might want to come up with a better line to that question, particularly for an evangelical audience.
* Speaking of Giuliani, the South Carolina NAACP is hammering the former mayor picking a state campaign chairman who a) considers the NAACP the “National Association of Retarded People”; and b) is unusually fond of the Confederate battle flag.
* Mitt Romney rented Fenway Park in Boston for an event that was, shall we say, sparsely attended.
* And speaking of Romney, the former governor has a new public-relations problem to worry about. Apparently, he strapped a dog carrier — with the family dog Seamus, an Irish Setter, in it — to the roof of the family station wagon for a 12-hour drive. As Time explained, “Massachusetts’s animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal ‘in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon.’ An officer for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals responded to a description of the situation saying ‘it’s definitely something I’d want to check out.'”
* And The Hill reported, “California State Assemblywoman Laura Richardson (D) defeated state Sen. Jenny Oropeza (D) by a larger-than-expected margin late Tuesday in a special election to fill the late Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald’s seat.” Richardson will face Republican John Kanaley in an Aug. 21 runoff, which she is expected to win easily.