The first trip he took as a senator was to Israel, Thompson says, beginning his comments to the Republican Jewish Coalition.
“Mitt and I are having a tough time coming in and following our spouses. We’re going to be something of a come-down, and there’s not much we can do about it… I’m starting to get a few, ‘Fred, if you can’t make it, that’s okay, as long as Jeri can make it.’”
Fred begins with his talk about principles. He uses the ‘we have shed more blood’ line again, and gets a respectable level of applause.
“If you need some help, you’ll get it, but if you can help yourself, you ought to. That’s the kind of country I was raised in, the kind of country we have, and the kind of country that we must protect at all costs.”
Fred talks about the “windfall” that Democrats expect from eliminating Bush’s tax cuts on the rich.
“They also tell us if we just bring the troops home, the wicked wild world will not harm us any more.”
Thompson says the Democrats’ plans are path to “comfortable mediocrity that would bring us neither peace nor prosperity…. The liberal philosophy must be rejected at all costs.”
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“This war will be with us when our problems in Iraq are in our rear-view mirror… The American people need to understand that.”
It’s a quiet crowd so far.
In some ways, Thompson’s speeches do have the odd detail — “The terror masters of Damascus and Tehran do not see much difference between the United States of America and Israel” (Is that a Ledeen line?) or reference to Andrew Roberts’ “The History of the English-Speaking Peoples” — but they generally begin at the level of grand principle and only rarely dip into the nitty-gritty of detail.
When asked about combatting media bias, Thompson feigns outrage: “As for the accusation that I’m a member of the media, that is one accusation that I won’t stand for, young man! No, I did a little television and radio work… It ought to be labeled as totally, totally irresponsible. It ought to be punished by marketplace, and people ought to think about who they want to do business with. The nut cases are not the only ones who have free speech.
A nice moment of not pandering: Asked, “Would you pardon Jonathan Pollard?” Thompson responds, “Not unless some facts were brought to my attention that I wasn’t aware of… He got his trial, he got due process, and as far as I’m concerned, he’ll finish his prison sentence.”
A woman in the audience objects to the use of the term “friendly Arab states” and asks Thompson to name some. He mentions Jordan. He said that Saudi Arabia has significant problems, and that there is “interdependence” but that the country “is not an enemy.”
On Hillary: “If we react to her, and we finesse, and we worry about what she’s doing, we play right into their hands.”