{"id":12606,"date":"2007-08-20T16:20:22","date_gmt":"2007-08-20T20:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12606.html"},"modified":"2007-08-20T16:20:22","modified_gmt":"2007-08-20T20:20:22","slug":"hes-far-better-with-a-script","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/hes-far-better-with-a-script\/","title":{"rendered":"He’s far better with a script"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday afternoon, CNN’s John King chatted with one-of-these-days presidential hopeful Fred Thompson at the Iowa State Fair. The actor-senator-lobbyist — who was mocked for wearing Gucci loafers<\/a> to the fair — seemed a little confused<\/a> about his position on gay marriage.<\/p>\n

KING: You met this morning privately with some conservative activists in this state, the people who helped people win the caucuses in the past.<\/p>\n

They say that they were very comfortable with everything you said in that private meeting, very comfortable with your agenda. But they say they are skeptical, that they don’t want to just hear lip service. They want to see results.<\/p>\n

And they want to know, over time, as they meet you, would a President Fred Thompson actively push a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage? Would a President Fred Thompson actively push to overturn Roe v. Wade? What are the answers to those questions?<\/p>\n

THOMPSON: Yes. Yes. I think that, with regard to gay marriage, you have a full faith and credit issue. I don’t think one state ought to be able to pass a law requiring gay marriage or allowing gay marriage, and have another state be required to follow along under full faith and credit.<\/p>\n

There are some exceptions and exemptions for that. It hasn’t happened yet, but I think a federal court would very much — very well likely will — will go in that direction. And the constitutional amendment would cure that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most people read that answer to mean, well, no one knew what in the world Thompson was trying to say. Yes, he wants an amendment? No, there need to be “exceptions and exemptions”? An amendment would “cure” what, exactly?<\/p>\n

Given the reaction, Thompson’s campaign felt that it was necessarily to issue a written clarification. It didn’t help.
\n
\nA Thompson aide sent this<\/a> to National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez:<\/p>\n

In an interview with CNN today, former Senator Fred Thompson’s position on constitutional amendments concerning gay marriage was unclear.<\/p>\n

Thompson believes that states should be able to adopt their own laws on marriage consistent with the views of their citizens.<\/p>\n

He does not believe that one state should be able to impose its marriage laws on other states, or that activist judges should construe the constitution to require that.<\/p>\n

If necessary, he would support a constitutional amendment prohibiting states from imposing their laws on marriage on other states.<\/p>\n

Fred Thompson does not support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Remember, this isn’t a convoluted answer from an unprepared candidate; it’s a written statement reflecting the unprepared candidate’s policy position.<\/p>\n

So, Thompson doesn’t want an amendment to ban gay marriage, but he’s open to amending the Constitution to prevent states from recognizing each other’s marriage laws. (You can get married in, say, Oregon, but that doesn’t mean Idaho would have to recognize your marriage as legal.)<\/p>\n

Needless to say, this isn’t the conservative line at all, and the Dobson crowd — which has been gravitating towards Thompson for weeks — will be deeply<\/em> disappointed to hear that their so-called savior candidate opposes the very amendment they want so desperately.<\/p>\n

The more I see of Thompson, the more I’m convinced his campaign is going to struggle. A lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday afternoon, CNN’s John King chatted with one-of-these-days presidential hopeful Fred Thompson at the Iowa State Fair. The actor-senator-lobbyist — who was mocked for wearing Gucci loafers to the fair — seemed a little confused about his position on gay marriage. KING: You met this morning privately with some conservative activists in this state, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}