The Hit-Job Mentality

Fred Thompson is raising money by -- get this -- boasting that he refused to raise his hand when the Des Moines Register editor asked him to. ( And he'll use that same uncompromising stance against the terrorists!):

"Don't you want a conservative leader who won't grovel to the liberal media?

"If 2,400 people donate in the next 24 hours it will tell the liberal media that the American people are tired of their games."

Giuliani is still the national front-runner, but the Weekly Standard's Richelieu expects him to fade fast:

"Rudy's polling spin has always been built on weak timber. It's easy to lead early state polls when you are famous and no one has heard of your opponents. But in mature markets like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina where others are active, Rudy does poorly. Plus the mayor is getting hammered on ethics in the national media. If he loses IA, NH, MI, SC, and NV, Rudy will become a single-digits guy in the Feb. 5 states he has been boasting about. Tough news for all those NYC conservatives who have been waving polls around heralding the unstoppable Rudy for months and months."

How many times have you heard the GOP candidates invoke Reagan? Peggy Noonan, the Gipper's onetime speechwriter, says the landscape has changed:

"I wonder if our old friend Ronald Reagan could rise in this party, this environment. Not a regular churchgoer, said he experienced God riding his horse at the ranch, divorced, relaxed about the faiths of his friends and aides, or about its absence. He was a believing Christian, but he spent his adulthood in relativist Hollywood, and had a father who belonged to what some saw, and even see, as the Catholic cult. I'm just not sure he'd be pure enough to make it in this party. I'm not sure he'd be considered good enough."

That hasn't stopped the other GOP candidates from invoking his name -- or his myth -- every two minutes.