Earlier in the year local Republicans, like their
counterparts elsewhere in Tennessee, were jumping ship from other presidential
campaigns to make known their allegiance to former Senator Fred Thompson. That
was back when Law and Order star Thompson, presumably on the strength of
his Nielsen ratings, was considered the answer to GOP prayers.
The lanky, rawboned actor/lawyer/lobbyist, a native of
Lawrenceburg in Middle Tennessee and a University of Memphis graduate, had ample
cachet. A protégé of former Senator Howard Baker, who in 1973 had made him
minority counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee, Thompson had by 2007 been
in the public eye for a full generation.
His acting career in the movies as well as on TV, plus
eight years in the Senate, had made him a familiar figure enough to be a
formidable trump card. But when he got turned up on the table – or, more to the
point, when he began standing side by side with his GOP rivals on the debate
stage – something seemed to be missing.
Maybe it was age (some thought Thompson looked unexpectedly
thin and ravaged), maybe it was conviction (what was his role supposed to be?
moderate? arch-conservative? Bushite? critic?), or maybe it was the candidate’s
well-known laissez-faire attitude toward exertion. Whatever the case, The
Thompson boom went from bang to whimper in record time.
It is not just that his finances are hurting or that the
national media is beginning to write him off or that his numbers have dwindled
to single digits in Iowa, whose caucuses are coming up within a month’s time.
The real problem is a rival area candidate who has been
auditioning well on the road. That’s Mike Huckabee, the former governor of
Arkansas and, as has been pointed out ad infinitum, a native of Hope, home town
of two-term former Democratic president Bill Clinton, another up-from-nowhere
sort.
By now, Huckabee has actually taken the lead among
Republicans in Iowa. His dramatic arrow up parallels Thompson’s going down. And,
whereas Thompson had never quite defined his character in the ongoing campaign
drama, the folksy but articulate Huckabee has his down pat: He’s an unabashed
pro-life social conservative but an economic populist who raised taxes for
social programs as governor and who regularly denounces “Wall Street” in the
manner of a latter-day FDR.
As such, Huckabee performs the improbable feat of yoking
together two points of view that have been politically sundered for well over a
generation. In some ways, he’s a throwback to the old Southern Democratic model.
He’s a former Baptist preacher who can also play a mean bass guitar on “Free
Bird” – a feat he performed alongside current Shelby GOP chairman Bill
Giannini’s lead guitar at the local Republican “Master Meal” last year.
Huckabee’s plain-spoken oratory was also a huge hit at that event, and there’s
no doubt that the seeds for a mass following have been planted in these parts.
Tracy Dewitt of the northeast Shelby Republican Club is a
dedicated supporter, as is Paul Shanklin, the local businessman and successful
impressionist who does all those politician’s voice for Rush Limbaugh. The
Arkansan’s national campaign manager, moreover, is Chip Saltzman, an ex-Memphian
and a graduate of Christian Brothers University.
When the East Shelby Republican Club, one of the GOP’s
local bedrocks, had an informal straw vote poll at its regular monthly meeting
last week, Fred Thompson still had the residual strength to come out well ahead.
Huckabee was down among such relative also-rans as New York’s Rudy Giuliani and
Massachusett’s Mitt Romney.
But that, as club president Bill Wood acknowledges, was
then. Now is something else. “That was before Huckabee got a front-page article
in USA Today and all this other recognition.” If the same straw vote were
held today? “Oh he’d go up like a bullet. There were already a lot of people
here who liked him. Now they’re starting to see how he’s doing in the rest of
the nation.”
Indeed, it is probable that, if Huckabee should hold his present numbers and win
Iowa, you couldn’t build a big enough bandwagon to accommodate his supporters
locally.
One caveat: Thompson could still come back. There are many
political observers who remember his lackadaisical start in 1994 against
Democratic Senate opponent Jim Cooper, whom he trailed at one point by 20 points
in the polls – the same number he would eventually win by against Cooper.
But for the time being, the man from Hope has center stage.
