See previous: 2007.04.30 Decision '08 Roundup ...

Below the fold (newest items at the top):

• Vanity Fair: Rudy is a lunatic
• Video: Pelosi by the Numbers
• Buckley and Will See Doom for GOP

Ex-Senator Seen as Rehearsing for Prime Time

WASHINGTON, April 30 — When 10 of the declared Republican presidential candidates gather for their first debate on Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Southern California, Fred D. Thompson, the actor and politician, will not be among them. But he will not be far offstage.

Mr. Thompson, the former Tennessee senator and current presidential question mark, is speaking the next night at the annual dinner of the Lincoln Club of Orange County, an influential conservative group. The scheduling illustrates the political place Mr. Thompson occupies: he is of the presidential campaign, but not in it. Yet.

Making speeches at carefully chosen appearances, doing an occasional interview and fielding questions from Republican congressmen, Mr. Thompson, 64, is running something of a guerrilla exploratory effort. He even weighed in recently on a conservative blog to offer a detailed defense of his ideas on federalism.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Thompson has been consulting with his inner circle — including former Senators Bill Frist and Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee and experienced Washington aides like Mark Corallo, a former Justice Department official — about how he could pull together the money and staff he would need to run. ...

Ed Morrissey comments on the NYT article here. SeeDubya has a good related post here.

***

Don't miss Fred!'s excellent NRO guest column: Sticks & Stones.

*** ***     *** ***     *** ***     *** ***     *** ***     *** ***

Vanity Fair: Rudy is a lunatic
By See-Dubya

Vanity Fair takes off from its full-bore, cover-to-cover Globwarming evangelism to helpfully compile all the gossip and scandal about Rudy Giuliani in one snarly piece. Their take isn’t that his judgment is bad, or his positions are odious to the base. No, we’re going for the nuance here—Rudy is mad, mad, MAD!

A famous person’s nuttiness is of an entirely different order than an unfamous person’s. The big issue with nuttiness is that it’s secret or shameful. But, in a sense, publicity cleanses or absolves nuttiness. That is, it makes it normal. We’re used to it. What’s more, with Rudy, there’s so much of it that sheer volume cancels the details out.

And, in some significant way, the nuttiness is the point. Rudy is reversing the basic political math, where likability = electability. Rather, it’s Rudy’s extremism, his vividness, the joie de guerre of his obsessions and fixations, his beastliness, that give him his chance. ...

Times are tough. We’re not looking for a nice guy for President. Romney-style decency isn’t necessarily selling to the base these days. The country wants someone who will treat Ahmedinejad like a ferret-rights activist and the Saudis like–well, like Rudy treated Prince Alwaleed after 9/11. ...

Guess I'd have to say there are some things I don't particularly like about Rudy but the fact Vanity Fair doesn't approve on him is going to be a plus in a lot of people's books, including mine.

***

Video: Pelosi by the Numbers
By See-Dubya

Sure, it’s propaganda, but it’s pretty darn good propaganda. Produced by the National Republican Congressional Committee, and poached from Ms. Underestimated, it’s a nice rundown of Nancy’s accomplishments: [video link.]

***

Buckley and Will See Doom for GOP
Posted by Blake Dvorak

At the end of this clip from ABC's This Week, host George Stephanopoulos and George Will have this interesting exchange:

Stephanopoulos: If this now declared deadline of Gen. Petraeus of September, if the political goals haven't been met by then, do you see large scale Republican defections at that point?

Will: Absolutely. They do not want to have, as they had in 2006, another election on Iraq. George, it took 30, 40 years for the Republican Party to get out from under Herbert Hoover. People would say, "Are you going to vote for Nixon in '60?" "No, I don't like Hoover." The Depression haunted the Republican Party. This could be a foreign policy equivalent of the Depression, forfeiting the Republican advantage they've had since the '68 convention of the Democratic Party and the nomination of [George] McGovern. The advantage Republicans have had on national security matters may be forfeited.

As Stephanopoulos says, Wow.

Compare that to what William F. Buckley Jr. wrote the other day (which Drudge highlighted today in very important red lettering): ...

Even though both Buckley and Will are careful to hedge slightly on their predictions, essentially two of the most respected and smartest minds in conservative politics just declared that the Republican Party will not only suffer greatly in 2008, but that it is in danger of becoming a minority party for generations.

I won't dispute the possibility of such a scenario, but we need to consider where exactly the Iraq war will fit in history. For instance, does Will's Depression-analogy hold up? The only answer is that we won't know for several years, if not decades. But right now I think it's still a far-fetched notion. The Depression was a world-changing event that lasted for over a decade and affected every aspect of society. As bad as Iraq is -- and for the fallen soldiers' families, it is incalculably worse -- the average American is simply not suffering on a level commensurate with the Depression because of the war.

As for their more general point that 2008 will be another rough year for Republicans barring any real change in Iraq, ...

Dan Riehl comments here.