Right Said Fred

The Club for Growth held its economic conference in downtown DC; I hadn't seen Fred Thompson speak since he entered the presidential race, so I stopped in to hear his spiel.

Shallow, appearance-minded stuff first: In the speech section of his presentation, before the Q&A, Thompson had all the energy of a tree sloth crashing on Red Bull and Now 'n' Laters. His sonic boom cough is one of the weirder speaking tics I've encountered, although it doesn't follow a pattern the way Hillary Clinton's laugh does. (She employs it to fend off awkward questions, Thompson coughs at random intervals.) When Thompson doesn't care about something he waves his hands forward, as if tossing the facts at you and saying "Bury these somewhere, leave no traces."

That said, Thompson's philosophy of taxation was… sort of interesting. "Taxes has little to do with raising revenue," he said, "and more to do with power." When he was asked why Democrats oppose supply-side cuts, whether or not they think they actually work: "Oh, they know." Thompson basically believes in broad tax cuts, all the time, a minimum of loopholes. The other way comes out of "a philosophy that would lead us into comfortable mediocrity, slow us down, stifle us, put us on the course of Europe."

Thompson nearly had a great answer on campaign finance reform, taking credit for the $2000/indexed to inflation donation limit (after McCain and Feingold's original proposal of a $1000 limite), but he stepped on it with a weird joke about CFR in general: "I may change my mind before this election's over with." No one laughed and a few eyebrows started levitating. "I'm saying this pretty much in jest," Thompson clarified.

Earlier in the day, Club members were asked who they thought would win the GOP nomination. Not who they wanted, per se, but who would win. Apparently almost every hand went up for Rudy, a couple hands went up for Romney. One hand went up for Fred.