Count me, like Matt Lewis, as a Fred Thompson skeptic.
A Fred Thompson adviser explained to the Politico that they don’t have to campaign because everyone knows who he is:
"Well-known candidates can do things a little differently," explained one adviser. "You show up, you’re accessible, but you don’t have to go to every county seat several times."
There are two problems with this. The first one is that he is not a well-known candidate. His name ID in the last Rasmussen polls is on-par with Sam Brownback’s and lower than Mitt Romney’s. This is not a strategy that reflects the the facts on the ground. The second problem is that new things in campaigns are almost always just ways of doing the old things better. But these Thompson advisors are talking about running an all-new kind of campaign…
Once people are done explaining to me how he can run a different campaign, they usually start explaining, based on how well known he is, just how electable he is.
I’ll start believing when fantasy stops coming out of the mouths of Fred Thompson advisers.