Thompson Campaign Manager Bill Lacy, on a recently completed conference call:

“[In Sunday night’s debate], I think you’ll see a lot more of the guy you saw in the last third of the Michigan debate. He gained confidence from his performance as he went on… We thought he clearly was a lot stronger at the end. He was getting his sea legs and gaining confidence every minute… We’d like to see a little more emphasis on our themes, that he is the authentic conservative with small-town values in this race.”

Perhaps the more provocative comments on the conference call came from Thompson Campaign Pollster John McLaughlin:

“We know Republican primary voters will be overwhelmingly conservative. There we’re tied with Giuliani at 24 (percent). we can grow in that group, Rudy Giuliani can’t… Giuliani’s strategy is to fragment those demographics – conservative voters, Christian voters, pro-life voters.”

“[Romney]‘s frozen in the high 20s in Iowa. We’re the ones who can beat Romney in Iowa, we’re the ones who can give him a contest the way no one can.”

“The liberals in the mainstream media don’t get conservative messages, and when they do, they don’t like it and they try to run it down… One reporter said there was only one applause line at the Values Voter Summit. I thought there was about a dozen.”

“Romney’s flat in Iowa and New Hampshire. We’re moving up. New Hampshire’s a little harder, but we’re moving up. It’s a second home state for Romney. Giuliani does well there. McCain has won that state already.”

“Georgia has 20 more delegates than New Jersey. The delegate structure favors Sun Belt states and Western states, and those are regions we do extremely well in.”

“There’s no way you can chalk up Iowa and New Hampshire as Romney wins right now. He’s losing stream, and we’ll see what happens.”

“There’s going to be a lot of pressure on Giuliani to win something before February 5.”

Jon Henke, one of Thompson’s Web guys, noted that the Thompson campaign will be liveblogging Sunday night’s debate in Spanish as well as English – he said the aim was to demonstrate that “Thompson’s message in Miami is the same as it is in Des Moines.”