Repubs field a new runner

A new candidate seems set to enter the Republican presidential primary race.
His name is Fred Thompson and, as a former senator, he is best known as a character in the television series Law and Order.
He is uber conservative - pro-life, pro-gun, pro-war, anti-gay marriage. I can't find evidence that he is a creationist, but he is described rather scarily as "saviour" for the political aspirations of the Christian right.
Of course, in a Republican mood of gushing retrospective adulation for movie star Prez Ronald Reagan, it suits that Thompson is an actor, a face familiar to KFC-munching families across the land. The people find nothing more reassuring than to be led those who have entertained them in their living rooms - viz Governor Schwarzenegger, Mayor Clint Eastwood, Congressman Sonny Bono, Governor Jesse Ventura...
So, Fred Thompson is not even officially declared, but polling way ahead of frontrunners Romney and Giuliani. What does this tell us?
I think the New York Times had it in the can back in 1994 when it reported:

"The glowering, hulking Mr. Thompson has played a White House chief of staff, a director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a highly placed F.B.I. agent, a rear admiral, even a senator. When Hollywood directors need someone who can personify governmental power, they often turn to him."

And now the country is turning to him.


There is another move afoot - a delicious undercurrent of subversion I have been observing here and there on the bumpers of cars.

I'll drink to that!