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 News from Around the Americas | July 2007 
Thompson's Emergence Shuffles the Republican Deck
 Adam Nagourney - International Herald Tribune
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| | Actor Fred Thompson, a former U.S. senator and possible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, speaks to Republicans on Thursday. (AP/Jim Cole) |
Washington - The decline of Senator John McCain's presidential campaign and the rising profile of Fred Thompson as a prospective contender are forcing Republican candidates to rewrite their strategies as they adjust to a playing field vastly different from just one month ago.
Seeing an opening created by McCain's problems, Rudolph Giuliani of New York headed for Iowa on Wednesday, the start of a two-day trip that reflects the campaign's confidence that he now has a shot to win in the Midwestern state, after McCain cut his Iowa staff by half.
And Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, released a television advertisement Monday emphasizing faith and family values in what aides said was an effort to stir unease about Giuliani among conservative voters who have gravitated toward him.
But it is the impending entry of Thompson - a former U.S. senator from Tennessee who, aides said Wednesday, plans to enter the race with a national announcement tour after the U.S. Labor Day holiday in early September - that has injected the most uncertainty into the contest. Across the board, Republicans said they were uncertain how strong a candidate Thompson might be in his first national campaign and how much money he could raise.
Aides to Romney and Thompson said they increasingly feared that their candidates would divide conservative votes.
That could provide an opening for Giuliani as he moves to capture moderate supporters of McCain.
Anticipating Thompson's entry into the race, Romney's advisers said they had begun examining Thompson's record and planned to highlight his work as a trial lawyer and Washington lobbyist. They also said they thought they could raise doubts about him among conservatives by noting his support, along with McCain, of campaign finance legislation that has been widely criticized among conservatives.
The shifting strategies reflect a Republican campaign that remains in extraordinary flux, particularly compared with the Democratic field. In the space of a month, the party has witnessed not only the near collapse of the campaign of McCain, once considered the party's most formidable contender, but also the ascendancy in polls of Thompson, a former actor.
To confront a Thompson candidacy, Romney's aides said they were adding to their forces in South Carolina, the state with the fourth nominating contest, in hopes of handing Thompson a decisive defeat in a state with a heavy conservative population and where he presumably has regional appeal.
Romney's television advertisement, focusing on family values, was intended as the first in what staff members said would be a full-fledged challenge to Thompson for conservative voters who have seemed unhappy with their choice of candidates.
"I wouldn't use the word threat - it's a competition," said Kevin Madden, an adviser to Romney. "We have to compete with Fred Thompson for conservative votes. Right now we'd expect that he'd look at South Carolina as the state where he is going to play the strongest."
Thompson's advisers, saying they would speak only anonymously until their candidate got into the race, confirmed that assessment, saying that Thompson intended to present himself as the most conservative candidate in the race and would go to South Carolina as part of his announcement swing.
They said that they were confident Thompson would more than hold his own against Romney and Giuliani, and that he had spent this time hiring workers - he has 20 in two offices - and studying position papers, holding fund-raisers and soliciting supporters.
In interviews, aides to the Republican candidates said they did not want to say or do anything - like poaching former McCain aides - that could offend McCain and complicate any effort to win his endorsement should he drop out of the race.
Without exception, aides to the leading Republican candidates said they had not written McCain off, given his stated determination to stay in the race and his long history in national politics. For one thing, they said, McCain could ultimately display strength in New Hampshire, a state he won in 2000 and where he is now focusing much of his energy.
And independent voters in New Hampshire are allowed to vote in the Republican primary, so a successful effort by McCain could complicate Giuliani's effort there, since he is appealing to many of the same voters.
In an interview Wednesday in Sioux City, Iowa, Giuliani, asked whether he worried about Thompson's possible entry into the race, responded, "I try not to," but went on to clearly signal his appreciation of how the political terrain had changed.
"I can't control what Thompson does and I can't control what Romney does and I can't control what John McCain does," Giuliani said. "Maybe I can react to ultimately what they do? But I try and think about what's our strategy, and our strategy is to try and have a proportionate effort in these states, to try as best we can to put ourselves in a good position in the big states and then try and win as many of the smaller states as possible."
Still, Giuliani used his first major speech in Iowa on this trip to pledge, as president, to appoint "strict constructionist judges," as he sought to push back against Romney's efforts to undercut his standing among conservative voters who are so important there.
Supporters of Thompson in several states say he has already begun laying the groundwork for a campaign, particularly in the South and Midwest. Workers are being assembled, important elected officials are being sought for endorsements, and supporters are raising money as if a real campaign were already under way.
Thompson's aides said he intended to run in all the major states.
Susan Saulny contributed reporting from Chicago and Marc Santora contributed from Sioux City, Iowa. |
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