Fred Thompson On The Charlie Rose Show

Fred Thompson was on the Charlie Rose show last night, you can watch the whole thing here:

Please take the time to watch the whole one hour show because it really gives you a feeling for the man.  It starts off slow but give it your time and you will be pleasantly surprised.

Rush Limbaugh was once again impressed by him:

Rush: Let’s go to the audio sound-bites. Last night on
Charlie Rose’s show on PBS. Former Senator Fred Thompson is the guest. Charlie
Rose says “You constantly say in this campaign that you are a conservative. What
does that mean today?”

Fred Thompson: “It means things
that are consistent with God’s design for man, is consistent with human nature,
it’s consistent with the lessons of history, the lessons of ages. They found
form in the Constitution I think and what our founding fathers believed. They
understand that man can do great and wonderful things, but man is prone to error
and sometimes do terrible things. That too much power in too few hands is a
dangerous thing. That power is a corrupting thing.”

Charlie Rose: “In all of that you didn’t mention abortion,
gay rights, all things that have been part of recent presidential
elections.”

Fred: “Those… Well you are talking about different things
there. Those are issues that are before us, which derive FROM
principles.”

Rush: “Now this is just fabulous to me. This is just great.
Here Charlie Rose asks Fred Thompson ‘Well what is a conservative today
anyway?’. And so Fred gives his definition of a conservative and Charlie says
‘Well wait a minute I didn’t hear anything about abortion or gay rights, all the
things that have been a part of recent presidential elections.’ Here’s how Fred
answered that, because Charlie Rose came back and said ‘Principles? What do you
mean principles?’.”

Fred Thompson: “Principles are what guide
you in coming to positions with regard to issues. You know the Declaration of
Independence said that our basic rights come from God and not from man. The
founders talked about you know life, liberty and the importance of that. And
that everything is based on those basic principles. And I take those principles
and you know for example I come to a pro-life conclusion there. And when we had
issues you know for 8 years when I was in the United States Senate about whether
or not the federal government should be funding, for example, abortion related
activities and things of that nature you know, the application of those
principles in that instance told me the answer was no properly.”

Rush: “I guarantee you Charlie Rose is clueless here. None
of this…this is…he’s a listening to uh you know mongolese as Fred Thompson’s
going through all this.  (laughing) Sometimes you just have to laugh at these
poor clichéd liberals who just live in the most closeted cocooned world, while
thinking they are the most worldly and uh erudite among us.

Many people have started to write Fred off.  They see the polls down, see no mention of him on the alphabet channels, and they write him off.  But look at what a week has done to Huckabee.  He started catapulting over everyone and people noticed.  The thing is that candidates like Huck, Mitt, Rudy are men who have just found their conservatism.  People started looking at the issues Huckabee has voiced opinions on in the past and they don’t like it.  He will fall to earth shortly. 

You look at Fred’s past and see the same thing you see today.  He hasn’t become a conservative overnight, he has always been one and has lead as a conservative his whole career.   His whole campaign is run on conservative principles.  Liberty, personal responsibility, and limited government.

I’ll end this post with a few quotes I just love from Fred over the last few days.  First is from the Charlie Rose show:

Thompson: I’m telling you, as President, if the lives of a bunch of American citizens were at stake and I thought that there was a good chance that an individual had information and could impart information that would help save those lives, I’m just saying, that I would do whatever is necessary to get that information from that person. I would authorize that. Whatever is necessary to save a number of American lives (emphatically).

Now that is a Commander In Chief talking.  That is a statement from someone who does not run a campaign by the polls, and if he wouldn’t hem and haw during a campaign for President he wouldn’t do it as CIC. 

This one is from his speech yesterday:

Standing about 15 feet away from a mouth-watering steam tray buffet loaded with fried chicken, creamed corn and macaroni and cheese at Wade’s Southern Cooking in Spartanburg, Thompson dismissed the idea that preventative care and wellness education should be central features of a government’s health care system.

“I’m telling you, I don’t think that it’s the primary responsibility of the federal government to tell you what to eat,” Thompson said to applause when asked if his health care plan included any details on preventative care, a priority for Democratic candidates.

“The fact of the matter is we got an awful lot of knowledge,” said the former Tennessee senator. “Sometimes we don’t have a whole lot of will power, and I don’t know of any government program that’s going to instill that.”

Thompson, ever a fan of small government, said healthy living should be the responsibilities of families first. “We shouldn’t be looking at the federal government in Washington first and working our way down, it ought to be just the other way around. With that, or whether you’re talking about education, there’s some things the federal government can’t do,” said Thompson.

Of course it should be the responsibility of families first.  But the Democrats want government bigger and stronger to tell you what to eat, what to drive, and where and when you can worship.

UPDATE

Oh, and I forgot to add a few nuggets.  The South Carolina Citizens For Life joins the National Right To Life in endorsing Fred Thompson:

I’m blessed and deeply grateful to have the endorsement of the South Carolina
Citizens for Life for President of the United States. They carry a significant
amount of influence with voters in South Carolina. These folks know my record,
and they appreciate the fact that I have stood with them yesterday, I stand with
them today, and will stand with them tomorrow. They know I believe in the
sanctity of life and as President I will do all that I can to protect life.

And his statement on this bogus NIE:

“The accuracy of the latest NIE on Iran should be received with a good deal
of skepticism. Our intelligence community has often underestimated the
intentions of adversaries, including Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and North Korea. And
are all of the CIA detractors now going to take intelligence pronouncements at
face value? It’s awfully convenient for a lot of people: the administration gets
to say its policies worked; the Democrats get to claim we should have eased up
on Iran a long time ago: and Russia and China can claim sanctions on Iran are
not necessary. Who benefits from all this? Iran.

“And what if the NIE
estimate is accurate? It’s essentially an analysis of Iran’s intentions at a
point in time. Meanwhile, Iran continues to enrich uranium for allegedly
peaceful purposes, but which would allow them to easily transition to a nuclear
weapons program at any point in the future. Maybe even now–now that so many
seem willing to forget Iran’s past deceptions and ongoing intransigence. After
all, a nuclear weapons program is simply an extension of the process by why
uranium is enriched for civilian nuclear fuel. To this day Iran has yet to
comply with international demands and its Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty
requirements for open inspections and other safeguard measures.

“The bottom line is that the United States must continue to improve its human
intelligence capabilities and intelligence analysis. We must hope for the best,
but not let our guard down for a moment. If something appears to be too good to
be true, it very well may be.”

The man just gets it.

Curt

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