I know that some people think Fred is anything but serious about this venture. Hugh Hewitt said so on my show that he would, "rather play Paul Harvey, than stay at Motel 6 every other night for the next year."

He may be right.

But Mike Allen of Politico IS on to something when he talks about the natural gravitas conservatives find in Thompson (Fred that is...).

And FRED's biggest asset to date is that he DOESN'T have to give some "explanation" about the nuances of his position on Abortion, he's not a Mormon, and he's not McCain. In other words - there is no shadow closet issue that particularly haunts him. The other "big three" are fairly well qualified candidates - but each of them HAVE to spend energy explaining why their deficiencies shouldn't disqualify them to the primary voter.

Giuliani has had a horrible week. Between compaining about the media treatment of his wife - after publicly inviting her to pratically attend cabinet meetings is less than sincere. He also insisted upon public funding for abortion. STUPID. He was beginning to gain some traction with social conservatives... that position effectively ended that.

McCain flamed out in the fund-raising department. And is still insisting on being... himself.

Romney had a GREAT week freeing up nearly as much money for the primary races as Barak Obama (both led their parties' - primary fund-raising efforts). And he zoomed to a tie for the lead in New Hampshire off the momentum. He is intensely intelligent... but still a Mormon (for better or worse) and being from the Northeast, with much speculation about his sincerety on abortion in the "bible-belt" corners of the nation all combine to not help him much. (On a personal note the Governor has been on my show, as has Hugh, to discuss these things directly. I find his likeability nearly unlimited. My observations here reflect what I think the public is thinking about him.)

With Fred, there are no nuances, no explanations. The only thing that even comes close to such for Fred is his past vote in support of McCain/Feingold that he has since renounced.

AND NONE of the big three SPEAK to the American voter the way Fred does. No parsing, no convoluted explanations for why one thing is not what it appears.

I don't know if Fred is going to RUN. But there are loads of reasons why he should, and I for one wouldn't mind him being in the race - for no other reason than to at least hold the other three's feet to the fire.

The fact that the Hillary camp is still shuffling the cards back at Headquarters is to be expected. With two Clintons and a McCaulliffe in the room with the "who gave what when" counting going on, you can bet that every piece of cash that can be mixed up between the primaries and the general election - WILL be. Thus probably how she got to the 20 million figure, when sources had been saying from within the camp - closer to 18 million.

Nevertheless... Obama beat Clinton on a much bigger point which goes like this. If Clinton's average gift per donor was somewhere in the $500 range (and its thought within the Clinton camp that this is a reasonable estimate) on her 50,000 donors - she only has the potential to raise $1800 more per person, giving her a total potential of $90 million off her current donors.

Because Obama's average gift was closer to $110 he can still get another $2190 per person, and his total could reach $219 million from his 100,000 donors. 

Of course there are variances and neither of these total potentials will likely be realized. (Though who would've thought that for the first quarter from 2003 to 2007 the winning total would go from 7.4 million to 26 million?)

But the principle remains the same - by getting FAR more people involved, Obama has helped himself in many ways - that still have HUGE upsides to pay him dividends down the stretch.

No matter how McCaulliffe spins this... Obama TROUNCED Hillary in the first primary... period!

Sometimes stories leave us speechless... It's pretty bad when a story this sick is so utterly believable. (Oh I know that his "longtime manager" said the remarks were made in jest - like 20 hours after they were made...) But the cable news pundits were taking polls amongst themselves yesterday and said that the original confession was MORE believable than the lame cover-up explanation of the manager... YIKES!