Thompson not always at GOP core
As a senator, he had a maverick streak that sometimes infuriated activists and colleagues.
WASHINGTON — At the pinnacle of Fred D. Thompson's career in the Senate, a conservative activist was so disappointed in him that he put the Tennessee Republican on a "wanted" poster. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the GOP leader of the Senate, was fuming at him. Republican colleagues were steamed when Thompson threw his weight behind a campaign finance bill that conservatives loathed.
"Has Fred Thompson Blown It?" blared a headline in a conservative magazine, accusing him of squandering an opportunity to use a set of 1997 hearings to nail Democrats for illegal fundraising.
A decade later, as Thompson prepares to formally announce his bid for the 2008 presidential nomination, he is being promoted as a godsend for conservatives dissatisfied with the established field of Republican candidates.
But during his eight-year Senate career, his only stint in elected office, Thompson was far from a champion of the party's conservative core. In fact, in the two enterprises where he made his biggest mark — the fundraising hearings of 1997 and the successful drive for campaign finance overhaul — Thompson infuriated conservatives.
While he compiled a largely conservative voting record, he also carved out a maverick profile akin to that of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), with whom he co-sponsored a landmark campaign finance measure along with Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.).
Ironically, in the 2008 campaign, conservatives are looking to Thompson as an alternative to McCain and other GOP candidates whom they consider unreliable allies on key issues.
An actor, lawyer and lobbyist, Thompson seems to have earned more forgiveness than McCain for breaking with conservative dogma, in part because his maverick streak was tempered by an easygoing manner and a willingness to stick with the GOP on most issues. But it may also be because conservatives who back him now know less about Thompson's Senate record than they do about his performance as a district attorney in the television hit "Law & Order."
"He carries the same baggage that McCain carries," said James Bopp Jr., an antiabortion activist who is backing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination. "Time does dim memories, and people need to be reminded of his support for McCain-Feingold."
"Thompson had a chance to show leadership and did not," said Larry Klayman, the conservative lawyer who issued the "wanted" poster to criticize Thompson for not running more aggressive hearings on President Clinton's fundraising.
"I would not vote for him for president."
That statement underscores one of the biggest questions confronting Thompson: Will conservatives continue to be attracted to him once they know more about his record?
Campaign finance was not the only issue that put Thompson at odds with conservatives during his Senate years.
When the Senate voted in 1998 on impeaching Clinton on charges arising from his affair with an intern, Thompson was one of 10 Republicans who voted against conviction on one of the two counts.
And Thompson, a former trial lawyer, opposed elements of a GOP effort to curb lawsuits.
Also, though he voted with conservatives on many social issues, he did not put those issues front and center.
Abortion may prove to be an unexpectedly touchy area. He built a consistent antiabortion voting record in the Senate, but he also opposed a constitutional amendment to ban abortion.
And questions about his commitment to the antiabortion cause have arisen from claims by a family-planning group and others, reported in Saturday's Los Angeles Times, that Thompson took a paid assignment in 1991 to lobby the administration of President George H. W. Bush to loosen an abortion restriction.
Lately, Thompson has been backpedaling on his support for the McCain-Feingold measure — which sought to limit the influence of big campaign donors in politics — saying that some parts of the law were not working as he hoped.
But Sen. Thompson was a central architect, not a casual supporter, of the measure. Republican leaders and conservative activist groups bitterly opposed the measure, which they believed would disproportionately hurt the GOP and its allies.
Thompson's focus on government overhaul was a logical outgrowth of his first run for the Senate, in 1994. Though he had spent years as a lobbyist and was a senior Senate aide in the 1970s, Thompson ran as a reformoriented outsider railing against the Washington establishment. He was not seen as a hard-line conservative but as more moderate in style and politics, in the mold of his Tennessee mentor Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr.
"Has Fred Thompson Blown It?" blared a headline in a conservative magazine, accusing him of squandering an opportunity to use a set of 1997 hearings to nail Democrats for illegal fundraising.
A decade later, as Thompson prepares to formally announce his bid for the 2008 presidential nomination, he is being promoted as a godsend for conservatives dissatisfied with the established field of Republican candidates.
But during his eight-year Senate career, his only stint in elected office, Thompson was far from a champion of the party's conservative core. In fact, in the two enterprises where he made his biggest mark — the fundraising hearings of 1997 and the successful drive for campaign finance overhaul — Thompson infuriated conservatives.
While he compiled a largely conservative voting record, he also carved out a maverick profile akin to that of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), with whom he co-sponsored a landmark campaign finance measure along with Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.).
Ironically, in the 2008 campaign, conservatives are looking to Thompson as an alternative to McCain and other GOP candidates whom they consider unreliable allies on key issues.
An actor, lawyer and lobbyist, Thompson seems to have earned more forgiveness than McCain for breaking with conservative dogma, in part because his maverick streak was tempered by an easygoing manner and a willingness to stick with the GOP on most issues. But it may also be because conservatives who back him now know less about Thompson's Senate record than they do about his performance as a district attorney in the television hit "Law & Order."
"He carries the same baggage that McCain carries," said James Bopp Jr., an antiabortion activist who is backing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination. "Time does dim memories, and people need to be reminded of his support for McCain-Feingold."
"Thompson had a chance to show leadership and did not," said Larry Klayman, the conservative lawyer who issued the "wanted" poster to criticize Thompson for not running more aggressive hearings on President Clinton's fundraising.
"I would not vote for him for president."
That statement underscores one of the biggest questions confronting Thompson: Will conservatives continue to be attracted to him once they know more about his record?
Campaign finance was not the only issue that put Thompson at odds with conservatives during his Senate years.
When the Senate voted in 1998 on impeaching Clinton on charges arising from his affair with an intern, Thompson was one of 10 Republicans who voted against conviction on one of the two counts.
And Thompson, a former trial lawyer, opposed elements of a GOP effort to curb lawsuits.
Also, though he voted with conservatives on many social issues, he did not put those issues front and center.
Abortion may prove to be an unexpectedly touchy area. He built a consistent antiabortion voting record in the Senate, but he also opposed a constitutional amendment to ban abortion.
And questions about his commitment to the antiabortion cause have arisen from claims by a family-planning group and others, reported in Saturday's Los Angeles Times, that Thompson took a paid assignment in 1991 to lobby the administration of President George H. W. Bush to loosen an abortion restriction.
Lately, Thompson has been backpedaling on his support for the McCain-Feingold measure — which sought to limit the influence of big campaign donors in politics — saying that some parts of the law were not working as he hoped.
But Sen. Thompson was a central architect, not a casual supporter, of the measure. Republican leaders and conservative activist groups bitterly opposed the measure, which they believed would disproportionately hurt the GOP and its allies.
Thompson's focus on government overhaul was a logical outgrowth of his first run for the Senate, in 1994. Though he had spent years as a lobbyist and was a senior Senate aide in the 1970s, Thompson ran as a reformoriented outsider railing against the Washington establishment. He was not seen as a hard-line conservative but as more moderate in style and politics, in the mold of his Tennessee mentor Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr.
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