Thompson/Kehn v. Edwards/Edwards

Conservative battles axes have been double-edged tools lately, swinging furiously to hew the novelty of a Fred Thompson candidacy into a dead presidential field, while trying to notch John Edwards for continuing his run.

Wonkette has the most insightful word on the recent frenzy for Tennessee's former U.S. Senator:

Despite being the only party to repeatedly get actual Hollywood actors nominated and elected, Republicans like to whine about “Hollywood values.”

Somehow, criticizing the idiocy, divorces, obesity, dumb religions and drug addictions of the famous makes regular Americans feel better about being dumb divorced obese Jesus-freak OxyContin addicts who are also poor and ugly, so every GOP candidate for every possible office has to dedicate at least one commercial or mailer to the pursuit of “traditional family values” as seen only on Little House on the Prairie reruns.

Anyway, draft Fred Thompson!

At the same time that Thompson has become the Tennessee conserva-blogs' latest novelty designed to slay the quickly maturing 2008 campaign albatross that is the Bush malaise-without-the-vagueness, they have gone to hacking away at John Edwards for announcing his wife's tragic relapse to cancer and the decision, with Elizabeth Edward's blessing, to continue his bid for the presidency.

That decision has whipped up some of the more loathsome jadedness on the right, which casts Ms. Edwards' blessing as none other than collusion in a bid to get more media attention on her husband's campaign. Yet, nothing is said about more cleavage worn strategically on Fred Thompson's sleeve in order to encourage the mainstream media to ogle and to glamorize. There's using your wife, and then there's using your wife. For some on the right, persevering in the face of sickness is out; titillation is in.

And here is a last bit of irony: ill wife urges husband to run just like trophy wife urges husband to run. Ms. Edwards says of her blessing, "Either you push forward with the things that you were doing yesterday or you start dying." That is still not enough to convince some of her character, of her husband's character. But Ms. Kehn shows some skin and a plunging neckline and suddenly she is compared to Jackie Kennedy, even though the former Senator from Tennessee is no Jack Kennedy; and as if photogene trumps character in the minds on the right.