Saguaro
11-11-2007, 09:51 PM
BURLINGTON, Iowa - Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson said Sunday "the political pendulum is swinging" against his party, and Republicans needs to work harder to win over independent voters.
"Everybody knows what's at stake next year, but I wonder if we've come to terms with the difficulty we've got as Republicans, and the fact that we're going to have to do a lot of things very well to prevail," the former Tennessee senator said.
What the Republican Party needs, Thompson said, is to nominate a candidate like himself who can "go before the American people and ask for the vote of a cross-section of Americans."
He warned that there are a growing number of independents who are in danger of being swept up by the Democratic Party, and urged his party to "take our commonsense conservative principles and make them applicable to today's circumstances."
"For a lot of reasons, (independents) don't like the ways things are going ... but they also don't particularly like the other side, but they are willing to give us a chance, willing to listen to us," he said.
Thompson noted that only once in the past 50 years has a party been able to elect a president of its party three terms in a row.
"The political pendulum is swinging against us. Everybody knows that the president's numbers are down," he said. He also pointed to the greater number of Republican seats up in Congress as opposed to Democratic seats, and said experts are predicting Republicans will lose even more control.
"And what they're predicting essentially is Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will be running this country, with larger numbers," he said. If Republicans lose more power in Washington, he warned, "we are going to go down the road of a welfare state, which is weaker on national defense.
"They are going to be selecting judges who will change the social policy in this country for the worse for a generation to come," he said.
Like many of the candidates on the campaign trail on Veterans Day, Thompson gave a nod to American troops past and present.
"Today ... I am reminded that we are a nation that has spilled more blood for the liberty of other people in all of the other countries put together, and, it has made us, because we understand that freedom is based on that, our freedom is ultimately involved," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071112/ap_po/thompson_independents;_ylt=Aj0UXfgwVoy59o2g4h.eRYC s0NUE
"Everybody knows what's at stake next year, but I wonder if we've come to terms with the difficulty we've got as Republicans, and the fact that we're going to have to do a lot of things very well to prevail," the former Tennessee senator said.
What the Republican Party needs, Thompson said, is to nominate a candidate like himself who can "go before the American people and ask for the vote of a cross-section of Americans."
He warned that there are a growing number of independents who are in danger of being swept up by the Democratic Party, and urged his party to "take our commonsense conservative principles and make them applicable to today's circumstances."
"For a lot of reasons, (independents) don't like the ways things are going ... but they also don't particularly like the other side, but they are willing to give us a chance, willing to listen to us," he said.
Thompson noted that only once in the past 50 years has a party been able to elect a president of its party three terms in a row.
"The political pendulum is swinging against us. Everybody knows that the president's numbers are down," he said. He also pointed to the greater number of Republican seats up in Congress as opposed to Democratic seats, and said experts are predicting Republicans will lose even more control.
"And what they're predicting essentially is Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will be running this country, with larger numbers," he said. If Republicans lose more power in Washington, he warned, "we are going to go down the road of a welfare state, which is weaker on national defense.
"They are going to be selecting judges who will change the social policy in this country for the worse for a generation to come," he said.
Like many of the candidates on the campaign trail on Veterans Day, Thompson gave a nod to American troops past and present.
"Today ... I am reminded that we are a nation that has spilled more blood for the liberty of other people in all of the other countries put together, and, it has made us, because we understand that freedom is based on that, our freedom is ultimately involved," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071112/ap_po/thompson_independents;_ylt=Aj0UXfgwVoy59o2g4h.eRYC s0NUE