For months Fred Thompson has had the good problem of high expectations for his presidential candidacy, but they've come down some after he reported raising $3 million in June, reports The Politico's Mike Allen. The total was less than expected, but then again the period was 26 days long.
However, Republicans have "turned queasy as Thompson has ousted part of his original brain trust and repeatedly delayed his official announcement, which is now planned for shortly after Labor Day, in the first two weeks of September." An anonymous member of the Thompson camp defended the restructuring and money haul by saying Thompson is still "testing-the-waters" and that "he's not a candidate."
Meanwhile, before Rudy Giuliani announces his health care plan today, he grouped the health care plans of John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in with Michael Moore's as policies that would ruin American health care, reports the New York Sun's Russell Berman. The DNC said Giuliani would put the pharmaceutical industry above Americans.
Giuliani didn't stop at health care, but also said Democrats are "falling over each other seeing who can raise taxes faster. It looks like they're going to raise taxes anywhere between 20 to 30 percent," singling out Edwards proposal to double the capital gains tax on people making more than $250,000 annually.
Elsewhere, Mitt Romney's campaign announced that Virginia's Republican lieutenant governor Bill Bolling will be its Virginia chair.
Further south, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) said there are three keys to winning the party's primary in the state: momentum, health care and black voters, reports the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza and Dan Balz. Clyburn said the race is currently between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama but added voters will watch results in Iowa and New Hampshire for voting cues. Health care is the dominant issue and one candidates can get around more easily than Iraq, Clyburn said. Finally, Clyburn said if Obama can win or place second in the previous states, he would "sweep" the black vote in South Carolina.
Yesterday Obama went after Clinton (though not by name) saying that experience in Washington becomes experience in peddling conventional wisdom, reports Radio Iowa's O. Kay Henderson. "That's how people end up voting for this war in Iraq was people were not willing to ask difficult questions because the conventional wisdom inside Washington was either this was going to be a cakewalk or it would be political suicide to vote against it," Obama said.
The first thing Obama would do in office is tell the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draft a withdrawal plan for Iraq, but acknowledged "this will be a messy withdrawal. People who say we’ll just pull them out are irresponsible."
Obama blamed inaction on energy and health care policy on the oil and pharmaceutical industries, reports the Chicago Tribune's Rick Pearson. "The reason is because it's not our agenda that's being moved forward in Washington -- it's the agenda of the oil companies, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the special interests who dominate on a day-to-day basis in terms of legislative activity." Obama also said "we're seeing" a "second Gilded Age" in America.
Union leaders, especially those of the AFL-CIO, are "so happy with the Democratic presidential aspirants, though unsure of whom to support, that they are unlikely to endorse any of them before the primaries next year," reports the New York Times' Steven Greenhouse. The AFL-CIO seems to lean toward Edwards but is leery about throwing an endorsement to him before seeing if he can win.
The Politico's Ben Smith writes that Edwards is repeating the GOP model of attacking the press in "fundraising e-mails and high-profile Web videos." He's not alone in attacking the mainstream media: Clinton's campaign has sent a fundraising appeal centered on a Washington Post Style section article about the neckline of Clinton's blouse.
Get these and today's other election stories at RCP's Politics and Elections page.
