LH--

Sorry, but wrong. Do you think Kerry would have behaved exactly the same as Bush in his second term? Not likely. Bush is sui generis. Not that he would even know what that means.

Mike--

You're absolutely right that some of the most effective members of Bush's "team" came from the advertising world.   I remember reading recently--in the WSJ, I believe-- how the Bush campaign narrowly targeted its campaign literature in 2004. They trumpeted No Child Left Behind to Hispanic housewives, for instance, since they had found they were particularly concerned about education. Of course they somehow left out the fact that NCLB is yet another underfunded mandate.

And Bush raised his percentage of the Hispanic vote from 2000 to 2004 by about 5%. Which, combined with the "dirty bomb" and the "your marriage will be in danger" campaigns, the latter made possible because of stupid idealism on the part of homosexual activists--warned against by that pillar of the religious Right, Barney Frank--resulted in Bush's 2004 election.   

However, if you think Fred Thompson, who is at bottom an empty suit, is a shoo-in because of Lawn Order, I believe strongly that you are mistaken. This is not 1980. And the incumbent's party is not the Democrats.

Would you like to explain in detail why Fred Thompson will win, despite his support of the Iraq war?

There is a hot war going on in Iraq. And there's no question which party got us into it--and still believes in it.

Obviously, we'll see how it pans out in 2008.

But unless the self-defeating cynicism of "Tweedledum and Tweedledee" is dominant, the Republican candidate will be hanged by the Iraq war.

And. of course, unless there's another WTC-scale attack on the US before the 2008 election. And though I'm convinced Bush is despicable enough to sell the Iraq war by exploiting 9-11, he's not evil enough to have caused it. That's just the typically overheated imagination of the frustrated Left. Which as usual is wasting its energy--and lots of Mudcat bandwidth--with absurd nebulous predictions.