I don't get the Fred Thompson thing...

Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo says that Fred Thompson is probably going to announce that he is in fact running for president after July 4. (Why, how positively decent of him, letting us have our national holiday to celebrate without him sucking all the oxygen out of the party tent! Well played, Fred!) I have to confess, I don't get this. Is the field of current candidates that scary that Republicans are driven to a state of panic, and are thus inclined to vote for the first actor who shows up, willing to act like a president for four years? Is that the deal here? Frankly, I'm unimpressed by the guy. He was known as being a tremendously lazy senator while he was in office, he married a woman, 24 years his junior, who is charitably compared to a stripper by the major media, and then there was that whole lobbying-for-years thing.

And, also, what is the deal with Republicans saying that they hate "Hollyweird," and then they can't vote fast enough for whatever random actor decides he's willing to pretend to be a Republican for a few years. I mean, c'mon--Ronald Reagan? Sonny Freaking Bono? The guy from "Love Boat"? And now Fred Thompson? The guy who makes David Brenner look like George Clooney's more attractive younger brother? Good lord, what an absurdist drama the 2008 campaign is going to become.