Fred Thompson and Spencer Abraham - Bad combo
Fred Thompson and Spencer Abraham - Bad combo
Date: Friday, July 27, 2007 4:38 AM
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1735 -- 7/27/2007 >>>>>
Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) showed his true colors by hiring Spencer Abraham as
his campaign manager.
Spencer Abraham used to a Senator from Michigan. He was so bad on immigration
that a coalition of groups united to defeat him in the election. Even
conservative Republicans rallied behind his liberal opponent, Debbie Stabenow.
The CFAW (Coalition for the Future American
Worker) played a major role in defeating Abraham. It was one of the most
dramatic victories the immigration reform groups have ever had but the
mainstream media totally downplayed it. The CFAW never got the credit they
deserved for helping to defeat the despot.
Check out this newspaper ad that was used in the campaign against Abraham:
http://www.jobdestruction.info/ShameH1B/Library/Archives/MichABIAd.htm
You might wonder why Thompson would want to associate with a Bushie (Secretary
of Energy) and a godfather of H-1B like Abraham. Part of the reason is that
Thompson and Abraham agree that H-1B should be unlimited and that American
workers should be unprotected against the corporate wolves who want cheap
labor.
Thompson's voting record on H-1B speaks for itself. Americans for Better
Immigration gave him a grade of F. Here are just a few reasons Thompson earned
a failing grade:
1998: Voted for S.1723, nearly doubling hi-tech visas
1998: Voted against protecting American workers by putting safeguards into the
H-1B law.
1998: S.1723, Voted to allow American workers to be fired and replaced with a
foreign worker.
1996: Voted in committee for the Abraham amendment to S.1664. The Abraham
amendment to S.1664 stripped all legal reforms from the bill. This vote shows
how closely tied Thompson and Abraham are.
2000: Voted for S.2045, a foreign worker bill with no worker protections.
Sen. Thompson voted for the Abraham foreign worker bill to nearly triple the
number of foreign high-tech workers. This is another crucial piece of evidence
to their close ties.
The mainstream media predictably thinks that Fred Thompson made a good choice,
but of course that's because Abraham has been one of their darlings for a very
long time. Abraham has never hesitated to play up his Lebanese ancestry to get
the sympathies of the media, and of course they love him because he wants open
borders.
The following statement from "The Atlantic" is quite funny considering that
Abraham couldn't even win his re-election bid in Michigan. As a strategist
Abraham has a proven record of failure -- a detail that the mainstream media
chooses to ignore and Thompson is willing to overlook.
The role of ex-Sen. Spencer Abraham is unclear, but integrating him
into the campaign will help. He is one of the party's best
practitioner-strategists and has experience running campaigns
nationwide.
OK, now let's get pass the BS and the hoopla to discuss the real reason
Thompson thinks Abraham can help him run for president -- $$$. The term
"grasstops" is a cute way of describing corporatocrats who have fat wallets.
He's less of a grassroots guy, but he can raise money from the
grasstops.
In conclusion Fred Thompson has probably sealed his own doom as a contender
for president -- even before he announced an official campaign. Mainstream
Republicans are just plain angry at the way the neocons have supported the
open borders agenda and they sure aren't going to trust someone who buddies up
with Abraham. Don't expect liberals to jump on the Fred Thompson bandwagon
either -- the Jewish lobby, which traditionally supports open borders, doesn't
trust Abraham because they suspect he has close ties to radical Islam.
John McCain recently acknowledged that his support of open borders hurt his
presidential campaign but Fred Thompson seems oblivious to the lesson. Is
Thompson stupid or what?
Articles Included Below
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8QJ5HJ00&show_article=1
Thompson Shakes Up Staff
http://www.steinreport.com/archives/010594.html
Fred Thompson Picks Spencer Abraham to Help Campaign
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/07/26/fred-thompson-and-spencer-abraham-bad-combo/
Fred Thompson and Spencer Abraham: Bad combo
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/07/defending_jeri_thompson.php
Fred Thompson's Week In Context
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8QJ5HJ00&show_article=1
Thompson Shakes Up Staff
Jul 24 03:52 PM US/Eastern
By LIBBY QUAID
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson is replacing
his acting campaign manager with former senator and energy secretary Spencer
Abraham and Florida GOP strategist Randy Enright.
Thompson spokeswoman Linda Rozett said acting campaign manager Tom Collamore,
former vice president of food and tobacco giant Altria, still will advise the
campaign. Collamore has helped organize the campaign for Thompson, who has not
officially jumped into the race.
Thompson has established a "testing the waters" committee that allows him to
raise money for a presidential bid. He is expected to formally kick off his
candidacy in September.
"The Friends of Fred Thompson have made a number of changes as they prepare to
enter the next phase, adding new experience and political strength to the
organization," Rozett said.
Enright has served as Florida regional political director for the Republican
National Committee and was executive director of the Republican Party of Iowa
and the Republican Party of Florida.
Abraham is a former Michigan senator who lost a bid for reelection in 2000 to
Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.steinreport.com/archives/010594.html
July 25, 2007
Fred Thompson Picks Spencer Abraham to Help Campaign
Former Sen. Fred Thompson has picked former Sen. Spencer Abraham of Michigan
to co-manage his presidential campaign. "[Thompson's pro-enforcement stance]
immediately translated into significant popular support and turned you into a
viable prospect for the Republican nomination, even though you had not
formally declared your candidacy. Then you appointed as your campaign manager
former U.S. senator Spencer Abraham from Michigan. Abraham is most famous as
an arrogant open-borders fanatic in his work as chairman of the Senate
immigration sub-committee in the late 1990s. He was so bad on immigration that
in 2000 Michigan conservatives and Republicans voted for Spencer's challenger,
pro-abortion liberal Democrat Debbie Stabenow, in order to drive Spencer from
the Senate. Abraham lost his Senate seat because of his commitment to open
borders, pure and simple . . . Are you not aware that immigration
restrictionists loathe Abraham as an open-borders true-believer, and that your
appointment of him as your most important staff person throws into doubt your
main selling point as a candidate? Did you have a reason for doing this, or
are you just thick?"
writes Lawrence Auster.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/07/26/fred-thompson-and-spencer-abraham-bad-combo/
Fred Thompson and Spencer Abraham: Bad combo
By Michelle Malkin July 26, 2007 11:41 AM In my 2002 book Invasion (p.
71, 76), I noted the open-borders obstructionism of former Sen. Spencer
Abraham (R-Michigan), who fought to block the implementation of two different
tracking databases--one for foreign student visa holders and the other for all
temporary visitors (which was mandated by Section 110 of the
1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act). Abraham led
efforts to starve the first database of funding and crusaded several times to
kill Section 110 altogether. On September 11, 2001, neither of those databases
was in place. To this day, they remain incomplete.
Now, Fred Thompson has gone and hired Open Border Spence as his acting
campaign manager:
Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson, who hasn t officially entered
the presidential race, is shaking up his campaign staff, replacing his acting
campaign manager with a former Michigan senator and a Florida Republican
strategist.
Thompson spokeswoman Linda Rozett said acting campaign manager Tom Collamore,
former vice president of food and tobacco giant Altria, still will advise the
campaign. Collamore has helped organize the campaign for Thompson, who has not
officially jumped into the race.
Thompson has established a "testing the waters" committee that allows him to
raise money for a presidential bid. He is expected to formally kick off his
candidacy in September, after the Labor Day holiday.
"The Friends of Fred Thompson have made a number of changes as they prepare to
enter the next phase, adding new experience and political strength to the
organization," Rozett said.
Replacing Collamore will be Randy Enright, who has served as Florida regional
political director for the Republican National Committee, and Spencer Abraham,
the former senator who lost his bid for re-election in 2000 to Democratic Sen.
Debbie Stabenow.
Bad, bad move. If the Fred campaign is trying to win over grass-roots
conservatives, this is a dumb way to do it.
Debbie Schlussel has followed the soft-on-terrorism career of Spencer Abraham.
Yikes.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/07/defending_jeri_thompson.php
Fred Thompson's Week In Context
26 Jul 2007 12:51 pm
Two days of high profile resignations, an NBC News report that fundraising has
slowed down considerably, open anxiety from Thompson supporters -- it seems
like a hex has been cast on his presidential bid.
What's going on?
To a certain extent, these growing pains are normal. It's extraordinarily
difficult to quickly build a presidential campaign from scratch. Back-end
tasks include creating a budget, renting headquarters, hiring lawyers and
compliance experts, dealing with the press, dealing with allies, dealing with
potential fundraisers, recruiting political operatives, recruiting supporters,
managing expectations -- and lots more. As new employees come aboard, the
number of voices, the levels of vetting, the procedural hurdles all multiply.
Campaigns at this stage often require a single puppet master.
Good Ole' Fred has one: wife Jeri Kehn Thompson.
Thompson unwisely allowed tension to develop between his wife and the rest of
the campaign staff. Ex-campaign-manager designate Tom Collamore did not mesh
with Jeri Thompson and the friction between the two was evident to the rest of
the staff. At times, Kehn Thompson would simply countermand Collamore's
instructions. She has final hiring authority -- something that every campaign
manager needs and Collamore never had. The Thompson presidential staff will be
her staff more than Fred's.
J.T. Mastranadi is one of the Republican Party's best opposition researchers.
His "ground" skill -- his ability to unearth new information
-- is the envy of many competitors. He was hired two weeks ago, and when he
began to plan for the campaign, he found it difficult to get his questions
answered. He quickly concluded that Thompson had yet to get his affairs in
order, friends say.
Now -- the strong hand of Jeri Thompson is not necessarily a force for evil.
Spouses can be good campaign managers: Jenny Sanford managed her husband
Mark's first four successful congressional and gubernatorial campaigns in
South Carolina. But Thompson's press has been brutal and borderline sexist, a
consequence of her many detractors speaking on background to reporters.
Thompson has worked as a professional political consultant and knows the
basics of putting a campaign together. And Fred Thompson trusts her to make
decisions. Incoming staffers need to accept that Jeri is first among equals.
It is unclear whether any adviser will rise as a counterweight to the spouse.
Probably not: Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Edwards, Bill Clinton and Ann Romney
are probably the most powerful quartet of spouses to exert influence in a
presidential race ever.
No one on their respective campaigns comes close, although John Edwards and
Hillary Clinton have been known to weigh the advice of others against the
influence of wife and husband.
It took about eight months for John McCain to discover that lines of authority
matter. Presidents ought to be competent managers. If a candidate can't get
his campaign right, then it's fair to wonder how he'd structure the White
House staff, what power he'd delegate to the cabinet, who would make decisions
in his absence and more. The presence of a single decider, in and of itself,
should not count against the Thompson campaign and is probably essential at
this point. The resignations and backbiting suggest that the campaign cannot
control its own image, and the responsibility lies solely with the candidate.
Ole Fred has to fix the problems. His supporters will lose faith in him if he
dawdles and his fundraising will dry up even more.
As Chuck Todd points out, one reason why two resignations matter is that there
is nothing else that matters -- Thompson isn't making news or campaigning.
The role of ex-Sen. Spencer Abraham is unclear, but integrating him into the
campaign will help. He is one of the party's best practitioner-strategists and
has experience running campaigns nationwide.
He's less of a grassroots guy, but he can raise money from the grasstops.
One Republican on the outer circle of the campaign said that Abraham will be
the campaign's chief liaison to politicians and fundraisers and will be one of
its public faces. Randy Enwright, as has been widely reported, is one of the
main reasons why Florida is only barely competitive for Democrats anymore. He
is that good.
"We're on track," communications director Linda Rozett said yesterday. The
message from the survivors on the campaign staff seems to be: a few scuff
marks only matter to the press. Maybe. But Thompson is losing fair-weather
fans. The opinion elite at National Review Online often pull base opinion
behind them, and they're starting to get mighty anxious.
Thompson expects to open a presidential committee (and call it an exploratory
committee) in August -- although probably after the ABC News debate on August
5. Thompson is slated on the Ames straw poll ballot, so he might well
establish the committee in the week between the debate and the straw poll.
Thompson's formal announcement tour is planned for the first week after Labor
Day.
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