Fred Thompson might not be part of Wednesday's Republican debate, but he's determined to play a role -- his campaign says it's buying ad time to air a commercial in the middle of the Fox News Channel broadcast of the event.
The eight candidates officially in the field will be on stage at the University of New Hampshire, and the 90-minute broadcast begins at 9 p.m.
Fox's Carl Cameron will be stationed nearby at a diner in Durham, where voters will be able to ask their questions directly to the candidates.
Fox says viewers can e-mail their own questions to debate@foxnews.com.
As for Thompson, he is taking a beating from New Hampshire Republican Party officials who say he should take part in the debate, particularly given his official campaign kick-off will be a day later.
But Thompson's campaign is playing the outside the Beltway card, planning an appearance on NBC's "Tonight Show" for Wednesday instead.
-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times
Comments (4)
A good move by Fred. He'll need to get in the mix soon enough, but the more he can be seen as different from the other candidates and not just as any candidate, the better off he'll be. And given his usual negative coverage of Fred, what are the odds that Carl Cameron will find a way to solicit a question that gives the candidates a chance to beat up on Fred for not joining the debate?
Posted by Anonymous | September 4, 2007 10:07 PM
As I have repeatedly said, "The Man is a clueless chess game. Heh heh
Don Jones
MyManFred.com
Posted by Don Jones | September 4, 2007 10:34 PM
As the Times disclosed this morning, Thompson had a lousy voting record in the Senate on defending this country against illegal immigration. It's time for the Republicans to wake up and stop voting for pretenders. We don't need another election with another Bush clone running against an open borders Socialist Democrat.
Posted by Brian | September 5, 2007 8:31 PM
Good for Fred! As to his voting record on illegal immigration: who back then was for closing the borders? President Reagan certainly didn't close the borders, and he set the bar pretty high as a President. As to Fred being a Bush clone, I just don't see it. Fred is more like Reagan than President GW Bush.
Posted by Chris Roby | September 8, 2007 12:57 AM