Thompson to declare - this time he really means it

By Libby

Via Crooks and Liars, the WaPo reported that Fred Thompson was going to make his bid official yesterday.

Fred Dalton Thompson will tell his supporters that he is running for president today in a 4 p.m. conference call with 800 to 1,000 elected and party officials from around the country, a source close to the campaign said today.

There was also supposed to be a 4:30 conference call with the media, which was later revised to be a simple press release with no opportunity for the press to question the ertswhile candidate.

Now according to today's reports, the announcement won't come until next week, which makes more sense. Fred seems determined to avoid having to debate his fellow contenders for as long as possible and if he had declared yesterday it would have been hard to explain why he's not joining in the scheduled Sept 5th event.

Fred's coquettish campaigning has been likened to the high school football star that teases all the girls who want to date him but to me it feels more like the reluctant groom who can't quite reconcile his commitment issues and keeps coming up with excuses for changing the date of the wedding. Interestingly, it appears Lane Hudson's FEC complaint has forced the actor's hand. He's not only suddenly ready to announce but he's shuffling around the money he's received so far under the "testing the waters" premise and even feels forced to return some of it. I guess all that dancing around in the grey areas of the "letter of the law" started to spell trouble when someone finally called him on it.

Ironic that the blogger who took down Mark "love those pages" Foley has done the other candidates the favor of forcing Thompson to make his position clear. I expect they were cursing Hudson for the GOP's black eye at the time, but they should be thanking him now for finally compelling the actor to stop rehearsing his lines and step into the spotlight as a declared candidate.