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From Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder:

For President of the United States, I will be backing former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson and urging support for him among friends and colleagues.

Thompson is clearly the choice for the Republican nomination for a host of reasons. First, a little history.

Thirty-nine years ago this spring found this 8th grader actively backing the nascent presidential bid of a first-term California governor named Ronald Reagan against the favorite (and eventual nominee), former Vice President Richard Nixon. History has recorded how that one turned out. Listening to and reading elders whom I found persuasive, I believed in: a) the unbounded leadership capacity and historic mission of Gov. Reagan; and b) the un-wisdom of turning the Republican Party over to Mr. Nixon.

Fast forward eight years to my college days. The spring of ‘76 found a gallant former Gov. Reagan, the beau ideal of our doughty band of conservatives, mounting an historic, unforgettable, magnificently inspiring insurgency for the GOP nomination against an unelected President Gerald Ford. Establishment Republicans recoiled against Reagan, telling us Ford was the safe choice, the electable one. (He wasn’t.)

Missouri Attorney General Jack Danforth asked me to abandon my Reagan commitment as a delegate to the convention and switch to Ford. I respectfully declined, standing by the Californian. As Reagan vaulted easily over leadership hurdles where so many others have faltered, a new term — Reagan Democrats — entered American political discourse, to describe the converts by the millions he added to our ranks.

Trust me, fellow Republicans, when I say this: Fred Thompson is the real deal, the closest thing to a natural we’ve had (or are likely to see) since Reagan.

Begin with this: Sen. Thompson is a conservative solidly within the mainstream of his party in a country that still wants to be governed by a center-right coalition. That is, if we Republicans can prove ourselves once again worthy of the trust of Americans who became progressively more disgusted with congressional Republicans through 2006. Thompson, who left Washington four years ago, is untainted by the debacles of 2005-’06.

Proceed to this: Thompson won his two Senate races by the amazing margins of more than 20 points, as he noted recently, “in a state Clinton carried twice.” The meaning of these victories is that Thompson has demonstrated crossover appeal, as Democrats in that great state voted for him both times, by the tens if not hundreds of thousands.

Thompson, of big screen and TV, has a star power, unmatched by any other candidate — an appeal rightly feared by our Democratic friends.

Listen carefully to Thompson as he fills-in these days for radio master Paul Harvey, and you’ll hear echoes of the great Reagan magic. (Reagan also turned to enormously effective radio commentary during his out-years ‘76-’80.) I smiled the other day as I heard Thompson conclude the Harvey show he’s been doing lately. Just a simple, “Let’s get together again tomorrow,” he gently urges his listeners, and the program is over.

What comes through is a genuine, Tennessee neighborliness you can’t fake. It’s also the kind of friendly discourse we speak in the border-state and Midwestern precincts I call home, where any candidate will need to prevail next year.

Fred Thompson is the man.

Submitted by Peter D. Kinder
Lt. Governor of Missouri

For more on Kinder’s endorsement, see http://www.johncombest.com. Comments to john {at} johncombestblog {dot} com. E-mail rules here.

For Missouri conservatives, the Peter Kinder and Carl Bearden letters supporting Fred Thompson display three promising traits:

1.) They are honest. By supporting a candidate who is not even a candidate, Kinder and Bearden are making a statement congruent with what we already know: Our current field of front-runners leaves much to be desired.

2.) They give us cover. Until now, conservatives have been forced to smile and nod politely when those on the Mitt Romney payroll try to convince us that the former Massachusetts governor is our party’s best bet in 2008. But if two of our state’s most conservative — and loyal — Republicans don’t buy it, how can the Romney camp get mad at the rest of us for not buying it either?

3.) They promise a genuine grassroots campaign. What’s more grassroots than asking people to sign a petition to recruit a candidate into the race? Both Peter and Carl have invested a great deal of time working with grassroots groups all over the state — from Young Republicans to Pachyderms to local Missouri Federation of Republican Women chapters — and have built relationships with the activists most likely to recruit their friends into campaigns.

I have dear friends who are supporting second-tier candidates just to make a statement about Romney and Co. I tend to agree with those friends ideologically, and love their eff-the-party-establishment attitude. But realistically, is there a better candidate for mainstream conservatives than Fred Thompson?

For more on the D and R presidential campaigns in Missouri, visit http://www.johncombest.com. Comments to john {at} johncombestblog {dot} com. E-mail rules here.

A few months ago, I did a little song and dance at the Missouri Chamber of Commerce’s Legislative Action Seminar here in St. Louis. Before the event, the Chamber’s Michael Grote suggested I stick around after my talk to hear the lunch speaker.

Well dadgummit, when Mike Grote makes a suggestion I take heed, and boy am I glad I did — Merrie Spaeth was the guest speaker, and she was phenomenal.

Merrie puts together what she calls the “Bimbo Awards”, named in honor of Jessica Hahn’s infamous “I am not a bimbo” quote. Every month, Merrie documents how public figures — many of them elected officials — choose words which put themselves, or their organizations, in a negative light.

Merrie’s monthly newsletter is the perfect (free) gift for anyone whose responsibilities include interacting with the media.

If you browse the newsletter archives, you’ll notice a recurrent theme: The biggest “bimbos” have fallen into the trap of denying the reporter’s negative words and themes instead of affirming their own positive ones. Reporters know what kinds of things they want — or, at the very least, expect — you to say before they even pick up the phone. It’s your choice whether or not their particular angle will frame the dominant narrative.

Even top-tier candidates fall into the trap. Just the other day, Barack Obama told the AP: “The fact that I’m raising obscene amounts of money for this presidential race doesn’t make me a hypocrite.” Which two words of that sentence will you be most likely to remember? Think he’d like to get that one back?

This month’s Bimbo Newsletter is here. Spoiler alert: The winning quote is, “I don’t have sex with my monkey.” Nice.

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Matt Stearns has left his beat at the Kansas City Star for a national general assignment role at McClatchy’s Washington Bureau. Matt’s successor on the Kansas City beat is Rob Hotakainen, who comes from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Rob has been at McClatchy’s Washington Bureau since 1999, and worked in the newsroom in Minneapolis from 1986-1998.

Josh Flory, formerly of the Columbia Daily Tribune, is at the Knoxville News-Sentinel, where he covers business. Josh recently started latinista.net, which focuses on Latin American news. Today’s news roundup: “Rappers, liberals and high-speed wireless.”

For what it’s worth — and to me, it’s worth a lot — Josh was the first reporter to mention a Missouri political blog in print. He did it in August 2003, two years before the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Kansas City Star started their blogs. At the time, other reporters used sites like mine for information but either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, push Internet references past their stodgy old editors. Josh did, and eventually other papers followed suit.

Comments to john {at} johncombestblog {dot} com. E-mail rules here.