Mitt for President
Sadly – but arriving with an increasing sense of inevitability – Fred Thompson has dropped out of the race to be our next President. A classy departure worthy of an honorable man who ran an honorable, if less than inspirational, campaign. Most telling is his lack of endorsement: a non-endorsement that has to hurt John McCain.
Yes, my predictions for South Carolina clearly were wrong, altogether too much made from the heart rather than the head. I’m not ashamed of holding out hope for Fred while hope was still there. Nor should my blogger friend Steven be ashamed of holding out hope for his man Huck (though we disagree on his candidacy).
I share the sentiments of Dr. Rusty Shackelford at The Jawa Report (H/T Hugh Hewitt):
Dear fellow Fredheads,
It’s time to support Mitt Romney. Can Mitt win in a general election? I don’t know. Certainly he has always had a better chance than Fred. And if the opposition is Hillary Clinton, then maybe.
McCain can beat Hillary. But McCain is, well, McCain.
Yep. That pretty well sums up my feelings at this point.
I also think Shackelford’s assessment of the Inside-the-Beltway perceptions of FredHeads is spot on (though maybe it’s just a projection of my own viewpoint):
I’m hearing some oddball theory that a lot of Fredheads are natural Huckabee supporters. That’s insane. Like, certifiably insane.
It’s built on the presumption that the evangelical supporters of Thompson are in the same boat as the evangelical supporters of Huckabee. I got news for Tom Edsell: they aint the same animal. Sure, they may have the same funny accent, and so I’m guessing that to an outsider like Edsell the presumption is that they must be the same species. But they’re not.
One is a Christian and a conservative, the other is just a Christian. One liked Thompson’s policy positions in spite of his rather flawed character. The other likes Huckabee because he’s a Christian. A good guy. God’s man in the White House. Yup, that’s about as deep as it gets.
Having to agree with this point hurts a lot:
I think the hardest part, really, is admitting that Hugh Hewitt has been right all along.
Ouch. Well, we press forward, following the wisdom of the great Satchel Paige: “Don’t look back.” Unless Rudy can pull it out in the Sunshine State, this is boiling down to a two-man race for the Republican nomination, to which I can only say: Go Mitt!
