I’m not playing favorites using his first name. I just think it’s a fun name. His wife and children came out with him for a moment. He said she his daughter Hayden enjoys the limelight and wouldn’t leave the stage once in Iowa. He delivered his entire speech with her holding his leg.
He mentioned his consistent pro-life voting record, but that when he first saw a sonogram of Hayden, he felt as well as thought pro-life. That is the power of images to engage people personally with the unborn.
Thompson began with the point that we live in the greatest nation in history and our obligation is to keep it that way and improve it. He said that our Founders knew there was such a thing as “human nature” and that our basic rights come from God and not government. He led him to speak about federalism. Most societal solutions are better determined by the people at lower levels of government.
Some, of course, especially those of fundamental human rights must be decided at the federal level because those are Constitutional issues. That’s why I believe abortion should be decided correctly at the Supreme Court, not the state level, just as civil rights had to be recognized at a national level.
I’ve heard that Thompson has been underwhelming at some of his campaign speeches. His energy level was different than the others, though he still came across clear and sincere. He talked more extemporaneously than is usual for candidates. He certainly wasn’t reading a text. I think he’s being himself, as the other were too, and his pace is just slower.
He made the point that in addition to being a great nation we must also be a good nation in our law and policy. He said he intends to use the pulpit of the presidency to work on that.
He said that he doesn’t know exactly what he’d do in the first 100 days as president, but he knows what he’d do his first hour. He’d go into the Oval Office and pray for the wisdom to know what is right and the strength to do what’s right.
The applause at the end was the first that elicited chants from a group in the audience.
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