Inside Politics

Thompson’s foes

“When one political party tries to influence the other’s presidential primary race, the reasonable assumption is that someone is trying to stop the nomination of a candidate that party does not want to face in November,” Peter Brown writes at www.realclear politics.com.

“That’s why a Democrat-aligned group injecting itself into the Republican campaign by alleging that Fred Thompson lobbied for abortion rights is a pretty good indication the other side thinks he has serious potential,” said Mr. Brown, who is assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

“Don’t forget it is the Democratic National Committee — not his GOP competitors — that is suggesting the Federal Election Commission cite him for campaign-law violations because he has allegedly been abusing his ’testing the waters’ committee to effectively run for president without having to disclose contributors and spending.

“The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association claimed that Thompson had lobbied the White House on its behalf in 1991. Thompson denied the charge, and John Sununu, who was White House chief of staff at the time, backed up Thompson.”

Fighting back

“Late last week Byron Dorgan, the North Dakota Democrat, offered what he assumed was an uncontroversial amendment to the 2008 Defense Authorization bill under consideration in the Senate,” Matthew Continetti writes in the Weekly Standard.

“The amendment would have increased to $50 million the reward ’for the capture, or information leading to the capture,’ of Osama bin Laden. But Senate Republicans noticed something odd about the Dorgan amendment. It contained no mention of a reward for bin Laden’s death,” Mr. Continetti said.

“John Sununu, the New Hampshire Republican up for re-election next year, quickly introduced his own amendment striking Dorgan’s language and replacing it with a $50 million reward for ’the capture or death or information leading to the capture or death’ of bin Laden. Sununu’s amendment passed by unanimous consent.

“The next morning the Senate’s [No. 3] Republican, Jon Kyl of Arizona, went to the Senate floor and pointed out the discrepancy between Dorgan’s and Sununu’s amendments. Dorgan’s emphasis on ’capturing’ bin Laden, Kyl said, was illustrative of the Democrats’ approach to terrorists. Kyl said Democrats treat the enemy as criminals to be captured and prosecuted, not enemy soldiers to be detained or destroyed. The revised Dorgan amendment passed overwhelmingly.

“The Dorgan episode also illustrates how quickly the terms of a debate can change. Republicans began last week worried that the fight over the defense bill would lead to substantial GOP defections from President Bush’s surge policy in Iraq. That didn’t happen. Instead Senate Republicans are confident they will be able to defeat every amendment to the bill that contains a congressionally mandated change in Iraq policy. What’s more, the Senate Republican leadership is primed to go on offense this week, having identified language in the authorization bill, and in several Democratic amendments to it, that they plan to portray as soft on terrorism.”

Edwards’ solution

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told Mississippi poultry-plant employees yesterday that their plight demonstrated the government’s shortcomings in addressing workers’ wage and health issues.

The appearance was part of Mr. Edwards’ eight-state campaign tour focused on alleviating poverty, the Associated Press reports. Speaking at Mount Levi Full Gospel Church in Canton, Miss., the 2004 vice presidential nominee called for raising the minimum wage, providing universal health care and stricter enforcement of labor laws.

A group of poultry workers complained that they are not receiving full wages and that they can’t support their families on their paychecks. Marvie Chapman told Mr. Edwards that many employees work up to 50 hours a week but do not receive the overtime pay they are due.

Mr. Edwards said there was a perception in this country that many who live in poverty are “just ne’er-do-wells or they don’t want to work,” but the workers’ stories he heard show that is not the case.

“They have a hard time paying their bills and supporting their families because, No. 1, their pay is low, and No. 2, they don’t have the kind of benefits that others have,” Mr. Edwards said.

Litmus test

Presidential hopeful Bill Richardson said yesterday he will not concede the women’s vote to rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and pledged to protect the right to abortion.

The New Mexico governor and former Clinton Cabinet member launched his Women for Richardson effort with pledges to support pay equity, limited Social Security credit for family leave and appoint judges who would uphold abortion rights.

In a speech to a mainly female audience in Concord, N.H., Mr. Richardson said his judicial nominees would have to support the precedent established in Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, the Associated Press reports.

“When you talk about Supreme Court justices, you look at the enormous damage the Supreme Court has done over the last two months. It has not been a good summer,” he said.

Newt’s solution

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s hilarious video, titled “FedEx vs. Government Bureaucracy,” had attracted 421,575 separate views on YouTube by late afternoon yesterday.

It shows him telling an American Enterprise Institute audience that in the world that works, you can track UPS or FedEx packages in virtual real time. The point is that private-sector companies can employ technology and train people to track millions of packages that are on the move, but the government can’t track several million illegal aliens, even not moving.

“In the world that fails, the federal government cannot find somewhere between 10 million and 20 million illegal immigrants, even if they are sick,” says the Georgia Republican. “So to me that leads to a very obvious proposal: that we send a package to every person who is here illegally. UPS and FedEx deliver them. We track them on a computer.”

Wilson’s favorite

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday won the endorsement of Joseph C. Wilson IV, the retired diplomat whose outspoken critique of the Bush administration’s march to war in Iraq led to the revelation that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA employee.

The Clinton campaign took the unusual step of announcing the endorsement on a conference call with bloggers — a reflection of Mr. Wilson’s popularity among the antiwar left and bloggers’ fascination with the Plame case, the Associated Press reports.

Mrs. Clinton “is the one candidate in my judgment who understands the need to get America out of harm’s way,” Mr. Wilson said in the call, which was moderated by Clinton Internet director Peter Daou.

Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.