A veteran of Louisiana state campaigns offers this ironic suggestion about last night’s Louisiana GOP primary — Fred Thompson won, or would have done well, had he not dropped out hours earlier.
Louisiana’s social conservatives created the winning “Pro-life, Pro-family” slate in early January largely because we didn’t know if Fred was still going to be a candidate at the time of our caucuses (turns out that he wasn’t, by a few hours). Because we had almost all the state’s social conservative leaders for Fred, we were also able to stave off Huckabee by use of this “pro-life, pro-family” slate. I was really pleased with the win last night, as it’s not easy to beat McCain, Romney, and Paul without a candidate, but that’s what we did.
About 90 percent of the pro-family slate was actually Thompson supporters. If Fred were to jump back into the race, he would almost certainly pick up all 47 of Louisiana’s delegates (the whole point of LA’s complicated system was to have an early vote while still not losing half our delegates like all the other early states have). That would put him AHEAD of McCain in the delegate count and only narrowly trailing Romney.
This Louisianan’s take contradicts that of the state party, who contended there was overlap between the pro-family slate and McCain.
I bounced the above comments off another campaign, who said it was plausible that most, or at least a good chunk, of the “Pro-Life, Pro-Family” folks were Fredheads.
I almost hesitate to post this, as I realize that for Fredheads lamenting the end of his campaign, the thought of him getting out right before a potential win is like rubbing salt in the wound…