Some conservatives will mourn the departure of the Tennessee Toad from the presidential race. I won’t, partly because I’m not a conservative, but mostly because Fred Thompson was as much a poser and a fraud as most of the rest of the field. I haven’t forgotten Sean Hannity covering for his slip-of-the-tongue that revealed his pro-abortion position – he’s not merely a Federalist on the issue, which is acceptable, but an opponent of STATE bans, which is not – nor did it escape my attention that he wasn’t much better on free speech than McCensorship himself.
That being said, his laid-back character would certainly have made for a better president than most of the remaining activists; if he wasn’t going to fight the leftward push, neither was he going to ban smoking like Huckabee, guns like Giuliani or single-handedly attempt to turn back the clock to 1950 in Detroit like Romney. Fred always looked better out of the race than in it, so don’t be surprised if more people eventually regret his departure than ever supported him when he was in it.