I'm trying to figure out what conservatives like about Fred Thompson aside from the fact that he's really, really tall. But as far as I can tell, that's enough. Indeed, so much as I wish EJ Dionne were right to theorize that the GOP is swinging towards a more pragmatic posture, I think he's got the causality mixed up.
The reason Giuliani won applause for deflecting questions over his personal life by saying "any issues in my private life do not affect my public performance," is because he's Rudy Giuliani, and the right wants to support him. They've decided they like the guy, so they'll buy into his panders, rationalizations, and barely concealed heterodoxies. If they didn't like the guy, they wouldn't. See Romney, Mitt. If Bill Clinton had another affair, they'd foam at the mouth and begin wondering about Vince Foster and all the rest.
Awhile back, ur-conservative commentator Peggy Noonan wrote a hagiography of Reagan call When Character Was King. So long as I can tell, it still is, and not in the sense that character means personal qualities, but in the sense that it denotes a part someone is playing. Play it well enough, and effectively enough, and all else seems forgiven. Thompson may lack ideas and experience, but he's damn good at playing a character -- that's literally his job, the one he left politics and public service to pursue. Various polls show him near the lead based on that ability alone. Well that, I guess, and the fact that he's really tall.
