BTW. That’s his wife.
Realising that none of the Republican Presidential candidates comes equipped with the star power of Barak Obama (even Giuliani can’t stop the hemorrhaging of the Republican base), the GOP are looking to the Great White Hope and actor, Fred Thompson, to rekindle the Reagan days. In an era where superficiality is king and substance is considered a liability, there is the glimmer of hope that the public will take the tough talking role Thompson plays on Law and Order and accept that as the real deal.
So what does Thompson’s track record look like?
His civic work? Please. Thompson is infamous for having been one of the laziest senators to serve, and didn’t pass a single piece of important legislation.
His conservatism? Please. He’s pro-abortion (except when he’s not). He was one of the few Republican senators to back the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, much loathed by conservatives. In a Mitt-Romney-ish flip-flop move, he just recently changed from supporting amnesty to decrying the immigration bill.
His professional career? Please. He’s spent most of his career as a paid lobbyist — an “influence peddler.”
His latest gig? Fred is the well-paid radio spokes-mouth for LifeLock Inc. which the Federal Trade Commission says deceived consumers.
Glenn Greenwald puts the Republican obsession with masculinity in perspective.
Republicans have long tried to exploit masculinity images and depict Democrats and liberals as effeminate and therefore weak. That is not new. But what is new is how explicit and upfront and unabashed this all is now. And what is most striking about it is that — literally in almost every case — the most vocal crusaders for Hard-Core Traditional Masculinity, the Virtues of Machismo, are the ones who so plainly lack those qualities on every level.
There are few things more disorienting than listening to Rush Limbaugh declare himself the icon of machismo and masculinity and mock others as “wimps.” And if you look at those who have this obsession — the Chris Matthews and Glenn Reynolds and Jonah Goldbergs and Victor Davis Hansons — what one finds in almost every case is that those who want to convert our political process and especially our national policies into a means of proving one’s “traditional masculine virtues” — the physically courageous warriors unbound by effete conventions — themselves could not be further removed from those attributes, and have lives which are entirely devoid of such “virtues.”
One need only consider the Bush appointees (pre-resignation) to realize that Greenwald is onto something. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfotwitz, Pearle. All of them chicken hawks, yet for a while at least, they managed to convince the American public that they represented the A team of strength and unabashed masculinity.