Rudy Knows Thompson a Serious Threat
2 September 2007Unlike the media who are universally treating Thompson’s coming campaign as a joke despite his constant first or second place in the polls, the Giuliani camp knows that Thompson poses a serious threat — perhaps the only serious threat — to a Rudy presidential bid.
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Rudy camp doesn’t take Thompson bid lightly
BY CRAIG GORDON - Newsday.com
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WASHINGTON - Rudy Giuliani invited his high-dollar fundraisers to a weekend-in-New-York-themed meeting this summer, and in between the dinners and the golf and the Broadway shows came talk of a man they all were watching warily: Fred Thompson.
Thompson’s would-be presidential campaign was creating a buzz among Republicans — particularly conservatives hungry for an alternative to Giuliani — and people who were at the meeting said Giuliani’s campaign team was relieved Thompson hadn’t joined the race yet.
“They thought they were getting a break that he didn’t get in,” said one attendee. “They were pleasantly surprised Thompson hadn’t announced, and that was July.”
Fast-forward several weeks and the former Tennessee senator and “Law and Order” actor is finally jumping in on Thursday — a full six months after he said he might run.
Now political handicappers are watching to see whether his entry proves to be a damaging blow to Giuliani’s shot at the nomination, or a too-little, too-late fizzle by a man who simply missed his moment.
Giuliani backers, particularly in the South, aren’t taking Thompson lightly.
“He’s a Southerner, and he’s a senator, and that gives him credibility,” said Barry Wynn, a top Giuliani adviser in South Carolina. “He’s certainly weaker today in terms of the level of enthusiasm of his supporters than he was a month ago … but I certainly see him as serious competition.”
Giuliani has made the most of a summer without Thompson’s 6-foot-5 frame, movie-star appeal and Tennessee baritone in the race — sharpening his appeal to conservatives on taxes and national defense, building a nationwide organization and raising millions.
He’s flexed the muscles on his rapid-response team, hitting back sharply at former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney over immigration. And Giuliani’s team is pinching pennies for the costly campaign ahead, even asking the fundraisers to pay their own way around New York this summer.
Giuliani rounds the corner into the post-Labor Day sprint in a place few would have predicted earlier this year — sitting atop every major national poll and leading decisively in states like California and Florida. He still faces deep skepticism from conservatives who drive the nominating process — the same ones who have clamored for Thompson — but has shown a staying power that virtually guarantees he will be a force in the race until the end, analysts say.
“I was totally dismissive of his chance to get the nomination, and I’m not dismissive anymore,” said Stu Rothenberg, a Washington political analyst. “He’s hung in there.”
But Giuliani is far from having the race sewn up. In fact, Rothenberg and others are reluctant to call him the frontrunner — he’s trailing Romney in kickoff contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, and Thompson already is running a solid second in national polls.
Still, there is a growing sense among GOP strategists that the race effectively will come down to a two-man contest — call it Giuliani vs. the anti-Giuliani, a more traditional conservative alternative. Romney hoped to be the Giuliani-stopper, but now Thompson and Romney will be fighting over the same voters for that billing.
It’s a view of the race that many Giuliani backers share, so much so that Giuliani has worked hard in recent weeks to turn that formulation on its head — arguing, in essence, that he is that conservative alternative Republicans want.
Giuliani is portraying himself as a tough-on-terror Republican who also took on the liberal orthodoxy in New York City before 9/11, someone who not only said he’d cut taxes, crime and welfare rolls but did it.
That message has had surprising potency, particularly in the South, with a mix of competence and conservative governance that advisers say fuels Giuliani’s poll standings.
“The suggestion that Rudy is not popular with conservative voters is at odds with the polling data, and everything we’re hearing, and the reaction he’s getting to his message on the road,” said one Giuliani aide.
A memo released Friday by Giuliani strategy director Brent Seaborn argues that Giuliani is his strongest position yet to take the nomination. Seaborn said data since 1952 shows that in almost every case, the GOP candidate leading in the polls in the fall before the election won the nomination.
The worry for Giuliani is that Thompson could prove just as appealing to conservatives on tax cuts and terrorism — with the added bonus of agreeing with them on social issues like abortion and gun control. It’s a theme Thompson’s advisers already have suggested they will play up, the importance of nominating a candidate who embodies every part of the party’s beliefs.
But to many Republicans right now, Thompson remains a question mark. He generated enormous excitement when he said he might run in March, only to see that dissipate as he repeatedly put off his announcement.
At this stage, political insiders believe that Thompson has left himself no margin for error — that even a small slip-up would confirm GOP fears that he’s not up to the job.
That’s not to say Giuliani’s team is taking their eye off him yet. In the Giuliani strategy memo, Seaborn warns supporters to brace themselves for some bad news — a bump in the polls for Thompson when he makes his announcement.
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