Black Box Report

After months of phoning it in, Fred Thompson was finally ready for his closeup! First stop prior to last night's debate, a conference call with rightwing bloggers to rally the troops. And as ol' Fred knows, if you want someone to "regurgitate exactly" your talking points du jour, there's one blog you need to have. So, of course, Powerline was on the call:

Thompson made it clear that he's "drawing a line in South Carolina"...staking his candidacy on winning the primary there. He hopes to accomplish this by advancing his claim (valid in my view) that he's the one major Republican candidate with a long record of taking conservative positions pretty much across-the-board.

Thompson's theme will be that he's fighting a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican party in South Carolina. His opponents, he will argue, all plan to move the party away from its Reaganite roots and towards the left.

And then it was off to the debate, where all the candidates tried to out-Reagan one another, but OL' Fred was perhaps the Reaganest, mixing up lively sound bites with attacks on his rivals, particularly Mike Huckabee, calling pretty much all of them a bunch of liberals:

So much for the 11th Commandment! That was just the beginning of the night for Thompson, who was so vibrant, so energetic, so ... awake that it almost made you think he was running for president.
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He went after Huckabee every chance he got, a clear indication that the two men are competing for a similar pool of conservative voters in South Carolina.

And did ol' Fred nail his big scene? Boy, did he! NRO's Jim Geraghty says ol' Fred blew right past the Reagan comparisons to remind him of...fictional character Roy Hobbs?

Winner: Thompson. This performance was so commanding, I wanted his last answer to echo back to the lights in the back of the auditorium, blow out all the lamps and spotlights, for the theme to "the Natural" to play, and for him to trot around the stage in slow motion while sparks showered down in the background.

Someone needs a cold shower...Geraghty lays it on a bit thick, perhaps, but Fred certainly delivered a breakout performance when he needed to. But not everyone is convinced it will help:

It's not Huck who's ahead right now in SC. If Fred's unwilling to attack McCain too then he's not really trying to win, he's simply trying to take Huck down. Which benefits … McCain.

Whether or not Thompson is intentionally acting as McCain's stalking horse, ol' Fred pretty much needs a win in South Carolina to live to fight another day. If not, it may be the death knell of his campaign. (Cue Law and Order sting) We'll have to wait and see.