Heard from one of the TAs – (Fred) Thompson Associates…

Fred Thompson’s South Carolina appearance is being touted as “a home run.”

The Tennesssee fundraiser “from all accounts went very well.” I am cautioned that “anybody who is claiming to have some belief that we were shooting for $5 million by the end of June is completely out of touch with reality. Those numbers are wildly inaccurate… we’ve met every single goal that we’ve set internally.”

I asked about a couple of polls showing Thompson in second place in Iowa, and was told Fred Thompson has a date in his head for announcing, and has not yet decided what to do with straw poll. “If the support is there for him in Iowa, that is a state he’ll be doing work in.”

I asked about Thompson not yet catching fire in New Hampshire, and TA pointed out Thompson hadn’t visited the state yet. “They may not know him the way they know other candidates. People assume he has incredible name ID, but he still has some room to grow. Some people know the name, some people know the face, and some people put the two together. He’s competing with people been there forever, including a governor of an adjacent state.” (TA didn’t mention this, but I would note that the governor, Romney, has also been running ads unopposed for a while.)

Finally, I got the feeling Thompson’s not-quite-campaign has something unusual up its sleeve for the near future…