HankT
State Researcher
imported post
Does Rudy Giulianiscare you?
November 25, 2007
Thompson Woos Gun Rights Contingent
By MARC SANTORA
LADSON, S.C., Nov. 24 — Joe McCormick, a burly man over six feet tall, a World War II-era Mauser rifle at his side, said he was frightened.
“Giuliani scares me,” Mr. McCormick said of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination. “What does a mayor of New York know about guns?”
Fred D. Thompson, who was about 30 yards away — just past the “Confederate Cutlery” collection of knives, fingering an M-1 rifle at the Land of Sky Gun Show here Saturday — was more his kind of candidate.
Mr. Thompson has been assiduously courting voters like Mr. McCormick, in stops in New Hampshire on Friday and South Carolina on Saturday, but also in Florida just as he was beginning his quest for the White House.
As Mr. Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee, struggles to make up for what even his supporters call a lackluster campaign, gun owners passionate about the right to bear arms is one group Mr. Thompson is counting on to bolster his efforts.
While many of those interviewed here had not made up their minds, and could say little about where Mr. Thompson stood on issues beyond gun rights, there was a reservoir of good will for the fellow Southerner.
Mr. Thompson was quick to remind everyone he met that he was just a “Tennessee boy,” inquiring of at least two men if they were “South Carolina boys.”
He moved slowly from booth to booth, looking admiringly over the various arsenals on display.
Mr. Thompson is increasingly highlighting the fact that two main rivals, Mr. Giuliani and Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, hail from the Northeast.
After the gun show, Mr. Thompson, jokingly referred to one reporter as a “Yankee” before challenging Mr. Giuliani on what he said was a recent conversion to supporting gun owners’ rights. “He never met a gun-control bill he didn’t like until he started to run for president,” Mr. Thompson said.
In New Hampshire on Friday, Mr. Thompson said Mr. Giuliani relies too much on his experience in New York. “Well, New York City is not emblematic of the rest of the country,” he said.
The Thompson campaign has always viewed South Carolina as a must-win state. While Mr. Thompson still does well in the polls here, he has plummeted in the ones in New Hampshire — now ranking behind Representative Ron Paul of Texas — and is lagging in Iowa, well behind Mr. Romney and Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas.
At the gun show, it was not guns that most voters wanted to talk about, but immigration.
In conversations with voters, Mr. Thompson disparaged “sanctuary cities,” which he paints as overly accommodating to illegal immigrants, talked about the threat of biological weapons’ being smuggled across the border, railed against the loss of American jobs and declared the need to make English the official language.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/us/politics/25thompson.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin
Does Rudy Giulianiscare you?
November 25, 2007
Thompson Woos Gun Rights Contingent
By MARC SANTORA
LADSON, S.C., Nov. 24 — Joe McCormick, a burly man over six feet tall, a World War II-era Mauser rifle at his side, said he was frightened.
“Giuliani scares me,” Mr. McCormick said of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination. “What does a mayor of New York know about guns?”
Fred D. Thompson, who was about 30 yards away — just past the “Confederate Cutlery” collection of knives, fingering an M-1 rifle at the Land of Sky Gun Show here Saturday — was more his kind of candidate.
Mr. Thompson has been assiduously courting voters like Mr. McCormick, in stops in New Hampshire on Friday and South Carolina on Saturday, but also in Florida just as he was beginning his quest for the White House.
As Mr. Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee, struggles to make up for what even his supporters call a lackluster campaign, gun owners passionate about the right to bear arms is one group Mr. Thompson is counting on to bolster his efforts.
While many of those interviewed here had not made up their minds, and could say little about where Mr. Thompson stood on issues beyond gun rights, there was a reservoir of good will for the fellow Southerner.
Mr. Thompson was quick to remind everyone he met that he was just a “Tennessee boy,” inquiring of at least two men if they were “South Carolina boys.”
He moved slowly from booth to booth, looking admiringly over the various arsenals on display.
Mr. Thompson is increasingly highlighting the fact that two main rivals, Mr. Giuliani and Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, hail from the Northeast.
After the gun show, Mr. Thompson, jokingly referred to one reporter as a “Yankee” before challenging Mr. Giuliani on what he said was a recent conversion to supporting gun owners’ rights. “He never met a gun-control bill he didn’t like until he started to run for president,” Mr. Thompson said.
In New Hampshire on Friday, Mr. Thompson said Mr. Giuliani relies too much on his experience in New York. “Well, New York City is not emblematic of the rest of the country,” he said.
The Thompson campaign has always viewed South Carolina as a must-win state. While Mr. Thompson still does well in the polls here, he has plummeted in the ones in New Hampshire — now ranking behind Representative Ron Paul of Texas — and is lagging in Iowa, well behind Mr. Romney and Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas.
At the gun show, it was not guns that most voters wanted to talk about, but immigration.
In conversations with voters, Mr. Thompson disparaged “sanctuary cities,” which he paints as overly accommodating to illegal immigrants, talked about the threat of biological weapons’ being smuggled across the border, railed against the loss of American jobs and declared the need to make English the official language.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/us/politics/25thompson.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin
