Time to Talk Wasn’t on Thompson’s Side
By Craig Gilbert, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
May 20–WASHINGTON — If you were grading Tommy Thompson’s performance in the second GOP presidential debate last week, you might be tempted to give him an “incomplete.”
By our count, he got fewer questions (four) to answer than any of the eight other Republicans on stage.
Top contenders, unsurprisingly, got the most face time at the Fox News Channel debate. John McCain got eight chances to speak (not counting follow-up answers), Rudy Giuliani got seven and Mitt Romney got seven.
But other “second-tier” candidates also fared better than Thompson in this department. Mike Huckabee got six chances, and Sam Brownback, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Jim Gilmore and Duncan Hunter eachgot five.
What did Fox viewers unacquainted with the former Wisconsin governor and U.S. health secretary learn about Thompson from his fleeting moments on camera?
–That he has an Iraq plan to decentralize the country and he would demand the Iraqi government vote on the continued U.S. presence there.
–That he still supports the Bush policy on limiting federal funds to a small number of designated embryonic stem cell lines.
–That he would pre-emptively destroy terrorist camps in another country if he had credible information that the camps were a threat.
And pressed to name a specific government program he would cut, he singled out “the program in the Department of Health and Human Services in CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) that deals with the stockpile.”
ABOUT THAT STOCKPILE: Although Thompson never really explained what “the stockpile” was, he was referring to the Strategic National Stockpile, which amasses medicine and medical supplies for crisis response. And though Thompson appeared to be saying he would eliminate the stockpile, an aide said afterward that he would eliminate inefficiencies in the program, not the stockpile itself.
“The stockpile does a great job, but there are some inefficiencies there that we were able to make some efficiencies and make some changes in that would eliminate that program,” Thompson said at the South Carolina debate Tuesday.
Debate panelist Wendell Goler didn’t think much of Thompson’s answer, turning to another candidate and saying: “Congressman Paul, can you do better than that, sir?”
AMERICA’S FINEST NEWS SOURCE: The political odd couple of liberal Sen. Russ Feingold and conservative power broker Grover Norquist served as “honorary co-hosts” at a Wednesday night reception held by The Onion, the mock newspaper that started in Madison. The occasion was the launching of The Onion’s Washington edition, in partnership with the Washington Post. Attendees included The Onion’s CEO, Steve Hannah, former managing editor of the Milwaukee Journal.
In his own mock serious remarks, Feingold recalled a 2003 story in The Onion headlined, “Senate Carpool ‘Forgets’ to Pick up Feingold Again.”
That particular story ended this way:
“One Beltway insider noted that Feingold’s current carpool is the senator’s third in the past five years.
” ‘I was carpooling with Russ in ’98,’ Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said. ‘Everyone else wanted to have a nice relaxing ride in, but Feingold would start up on campaign finance reform the second his seatbelt clicked. That guy would not shut up for a second.’ “
BRIDGE BETWEEN HEMISPHERES: Fifteen high school students from Nicaragua are living with host families in Milwaukee, Edgerton, Appleton, Wausau and Stevens Point this week. The teenagers are youth ambassadors for Wisconsin/Nicaragua Partners, one of 60 state chapters of Partners of the Americas, a non-profit organization that connects volunteers in North and South America.
“We had a lot of calls from around Wisconsin offering to host them,” said Amy Wiza, program director in Stevens Point. Parents want to show off what life is like here and introduce their children to counterparts from another country.
The group spent a few days in Washington last week. Aides to House Democrat Tammy Baldwin of Madison gave them a Capitol tour, and they met Charles S. Shapiro, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs.
In Wisconsin, they’re going to schools, visiting cultural sites, attending community gatherings and on Wednesday meeting with Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton, who coincidentally returned from a visit to Nicaragua a few weeks ago. They leave Wisconsin on Friday.
Audrey Hoffer of the Journal Sentinel’s Washington Bureau contributed to this report
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