Last Presidential election, I suckered myself into supporting Fred Thompson. I even donated $500 to him.
Of course, increasingly horrifying stories of Thompson’s utter disdain for basic fundamentals of presidential campaigning, like fundraisers (at one, he infamously wandered off into a back bedroom to watch a ball game) led many folks to say he was just phoning it in.
I’m now convinced he was a classic conservative stalking horse for his buddy John McCain.
Okay, I’m a big boy, I can admit my mistakes. I can learn from ’em too.
Is it just me, or does the fact that Newt authored the intro to Rick Perry’s Fed Up! in August 2010 point to the idea that he might have been intended as a RINO stalking horse for a Perry campaign?
Just sayin.’
(I say “intended” because Gingrich certainly wasn’t very effective either as a candidate or as a stalking horse, to be sure.)
(Incidentally, I just downloaded the Kindle edition of Fed Up! to my iPhone and it’s really good.)
Does Perry really need a stalking horse? He is far more acceptable to conservatives than Romney, but he has much of the same ability to raise money and not terrify the GOP establishment.
Well, yeah, he probably didn’t, but as of last summer when he and his team started writing Fed Up! as part of the Tea Party wave, I’m guessing they were speculating that to win the nomination they’d need somebody as a placeholder RINO to help diffuse the Establishment voters. The Establishment absolutely hates Perry. As someone said, he’s the real salt-of-the-earth cowboy W pretended to be. With the way events have turned out a year later, I agree the conservative/libertarian/Tea Party vote is so much stronger than expected that there’s no need for a stalking horse now.
Gingrich’s utterly lackadaisical approach to campaigning kinda feeds into this. Why the hell else did he run? Unless he’s trying to sell a book, but if he is I sure ain’t aware of it. Perry’s book the one’s that’s selling.