Waterloo, Iowa
Forty-five minutes before Fred Thompson spoke here last Tuesday night, young volunteers greeted reporters and potential Iowa voters just inside the front door of the Waterloo Center for the Arts. A thermometer down the street reported the temperature as 22 degrees, and the wind made it colder. Even inside, the frigid air gave those manning the registration table an icy blast every time anyone opened the door.
A young man with a "Fred Thompson" button stood by a table with coffee and hot tea. He introduced himself to another volunteer, and they chatted about their reasons for supporting the former senator from Tennessee. It was a ritual that has played out countless times across Iowa--something Mitt Romney's volunteers were probably doing more than a year ago.
After the candidate and his wife, Jeri, arrived and were introduced, Thompson took the stage. He warmed up his audience with a joke about the weather. It's freezing back in Washington, too, he assured them.
"It was cold--it got so cold that the politicians had their hands in their own pockets," he said. People laughed out loud. Over the next 25 minutes, Thompson portrayed himself as a limited-government conservative whose values are in line with Iowa Republicans. He boasted about his endorsement the day before by Steve King, the conservative Republican who represents Iowa's Fifth District. He pointed to a column by the Des Moines Register's David Yepsen, the state's most influential columnist, saying Thompson could still excite conservatives. And he delivered the kind of conservative
message many in the crowd said they'd been waiting for since the campaign began.
Much of the speech was the political equivalent of chum. On national security: "The best way out of the fight is to be stronger than your adversary." On the Democrats: "the left-wing, big government, high taxing, weak-on-national security Democratic party." On his Republican opponents: "You're not electing a set of plans, you're electing a leader."
Thompson made much of his strong showing at the last Republican debate, when he refused the moderator's request for a show of hands on global warming. The other candidates, he reminded the crowd, followed his lead. "I don't know how you're going to stand up to leaders of Iran and North Korea if you can't stand up to an overbearing moderator." More applause.
After taking several questions from the audience, Thompson asks the crowd for its support on caucus night, then makes his way into the crowd to shake hands. As he chats with voters, Dierks Bentley's "Free and Easy Down the Road I Go" comes blaring from the sound system.
Ain't no tellin' where the wind might blow
Free and easy down the road I go
Livin' life like a Sunday stroll
Free and easy down the road I go
Free and easy down the road I go
If you only get to go around one time
I'm gonna sit back and try to enjoy the ride
If the Republican nomination were decided only by performances like this, Fred Thompson--whose policy views make him the most mainstream conservative in the race--would be on a glide-path to the Republican nomination.
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