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:<\/p>\n
* As expected, actor\/lobbyist\/senator Fred Thompson launched his presidential campaign last night on The Tonight Show. When Jay Leno asked about the delay, Thompson said<\/a>, “I don’t think people are going to say, ‘That guy would make a very good president, but he just didn’t get in soon enough.’ ”<\/p>\n * Speaking of Thompson, did you know that his given first name isn’t Fred? It’s “Freddie.” Seriously<\/a>. Official marriage, birth and divorce records in Alabama and Tennessee show that the newest Republican presidential contender was born Freddie Dalton Thompson.<\/p>\n * Barack Obama had a different take on the experience question during an event in Iowa yesterday. Responding to a question from a voter, Obama said<\/a>, “I find it amusing, the whole experience argument, because I’ve been in public service for over two decades now. I’ve been in elective office longer than John Edwards or Hillary Clinton. I’ve passed more bills, I’m sure, than either of them…. What people seem to mean when they say that I don’t have enough experience is I haven’t been in Washington as long as they have. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a criteria for gauging experience.” It seems to me Obama should have been saying this months ago.<\/p>\n * Bill Richardson is still<\/i> struggling to deal with his recent argument that “the Lord” and the Constitution want Iowa to be the first caucus state. Responding to the fact that the comments drew considerable online criticism, Richardson told CNN<\/a> yesterday, “Bloggers can say whatever they want, but I care about the voters… I didn’t put my foot in my mouth. I stand by what I said. I make no apologies about it.” If you think message discipline is important, I don’t think Richardson is your guy.<\/p>\n * Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) held a campaign event in New Hampshire on Tuesday night. Based on this amusing picture<\/a>, it looks as if six people showed up. That has got to hurt.<\/p>\n * And in Washington’s 8th congressional district, Rodney Thom and Darcy Burner were poised to have a tough primary for the right to take on Rep. Dave Reichert (R) next year. Thanks in large part to Burner’s support from the netroots, Thom dropped out<\/a> yesterday and endorsed Burner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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: * As expected, actor\/lobbyist\/senator Fred Thompson launched his presidential campaign last night on The Tonight Show. When Jay Leno asked about the delay, Thompson said, “I don’t think people are going to say, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12789","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=12789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}