Fred Thompson Doesn't Pander

Found this in Gather.com.

• Fred Thompson Doesn't Pander
• 
  
• by Rob Port December 22, 2007 07:36 PM EST

• You gotta love a guy who will stand in the middle of Iowa farmland and refuse to pander to the subsidy-hungry ag industry:

  AKD: What will you do for the farmers of Bremer County?

  FT: (laughs)

  AKD: You knew this was coming, right?

  FT: I would continue to enjoy the fruits of their labor. I've been looking all over Iowa for a bad steak and I can't find it. Been trying my best. It's not a matter of what I would do for the farmers. Farmers are not looking for a president to hand them something. Farmers want fair treatment and a chance to prosper in a free economy and that's what I would help ensure. There's a lot of programs we've got out there, some of which are good programs, some of which are not. And I think that we need to work our way through that and make sure we're doing what's good for the country, not just the farmers, not just the people of Iowa, not just the people of Tennessee. But good for the country. A sound policy that makes sense. I think there's a lot more that we could do for the working farmer in terms of ecological programs and environmental programs - land conservation, soil conservation - that would be fair and it would be beneficial to the nation and to Iowa and to our country. We're going to have to phase out the corporate welfare system we've got, however. There are extremely rich people living in skyscrapers in Manhattan that are receiving subsidy payments. I think that's wrong. I'd put a stop to that if it was within my power. That still continues in this latest Farm Bill and it's not right. There ought to be a cutoff at some level and it's not right ot have millionaires receiving farm subsidies.

  Quite right.

  I think Thompson’s absolute refusal to pander - whether it be to special interest groups, political “kingmakers” and/or the media - is a big reason why he gets tagged with the “lazy” campaign label. His principles are iron, and he doesn’t bend them so that he can kiss the cheeks of the people who are used to being smooched by politicians.

  This has cost him dearly, politically, but at some point you’d think rank-and-file conservatives would want to stand up for a guy with principles like this rather than just go along with the judgment of the spurned political/media elites. [source]

This was taken from an article found here.

• Fred Thompson stumps in Waverly
  
• by JANELLE PENNY, news1@waverlynewspapers.com
  Thursday, December 20, 2007 11:48 AM CST
• A weekend of hectic, last-minute scheduling finally paid off for Bob Brunkhorst when presidential candidate Fred Thompson and wife, Jeri, made their first visit to Bremer County Tuesday afternoon at his invitation.
  
  Brunkhorst, the county chair for Thompson, asked campaign schedulers about a month ago to bring the former Tennessee senator to the area. The campaign announced Friday that it would swing through Waverly for about half an hour between its Mason City and Waterloo stops. The former state senator immediately began calling friends and potential supporters to ensure a friendly crowd greeted Thompson...
  

• Janelle Penny photo - Fred Thompson and his wife, Jeri, chat with Waverly Fire Chief Dan McKenzie Tuesday afternoon.

• Thompson sat down with Waverly Newspapers Editor Anelia K. Dimitrova at the Waverly Newspapers office for an exclusive 10-minute interview. Two national journalists who had covered the Bill Clinton and Magic Johnson appearance in Waterloo earlier in the afternoon showed up for Thompson’s sit-down session, but were asked by the campaign to wait outside.
• “[The exclusive interview with Waverly Newspapers] was the campaign’s idea,” Brunkhorst said. “The campaign just wants to make sure they give local newspapers an exclusive, because they don’t want a ‘big media’ campaign. They want to make sure they’re focusing on the grassroots.”
• At Waverly Newspapers, Thompson talked about America’s place in the world and explained his reasons for running.

• “We’re at a crossroads right now,” he said. “I think we have got to come to terms with our position in the world, for the 21st century. We know what our role has been since World War II, but it’s a different, more dangerous, more challenging, complex world than we’ve lived in before. We are facing an economic train wreck."
• “We are on a spending path that cannot be sustained in terms of our mandatory spending programs, as well as our discretionary spending comes with no restraint,” Thompson continued. “And we’ll be fine for awhile, but projections will show that we’re on an unsustainable path. Those are the things that are primarily on my mind. The unity of the American people is going to be required in order to deal with those challenges. That has to do with the kind of place our generation leaves to the next.

Click the top link to read the full q& a.