Denver Metro Young Republicans

In a rambling open letter riddled with spelling errors, noted reality-based health-care expert Michael Moore challenges Fred Thompson to a debate. You know…the Fred Thompson who’s not actually running for the presidency (yet)?

The letter suggests that Moore was stung by Thompson’s recent National Review opinion piece, criticizing him for his little stunt involving what Moore disingenuously* calls “9/11 heroes” and the Cuban healthcare system…Thompson evidently pushed a button there, but that’s only part of it. I think the bigger motivation for this challenge is the desire to kneecap a Thompson campaign before it gains much traction, because the left is more worried about Thompson than the GOP candidates who are already in the race. Rudi’s popularity as “America’s Mayor” can easily be chopped down by hammering him on his flip-flops on social issues and Second Amendment rights, Romney’s support can (regrettably) be undermined with both the left and right through bigoted attacks (a la Sharpton) on his Mormonism, and despite his intellectual merits (and recent attempts to polish his image with social conservatives) Newt Gingrich still has a lot of political baggage from the 1990s, which will keep him from ever wooing enough of the center-left to win the election. Thompson, on the other hand, has a Reagan-like charisma to him, and that alone is a quality which no doubt gives the left nightmares…quite apart from whatever substance he has as a candidate.

So it should be no surprise that the “progressive” big guns (such as they are) are turning towards Thompson. And it should be equally unsurprising that Moore’s “challenge” is less an honest offer than a screed filled with attempts to smear Thompson through context-free references to his voting record and through the sort of guilt by association with which Moore seems unconcerned when it comes to legitimate concerns about his own political fellow travelers (9/11 Truthers and apologists for the Castro dictatorship, to name just two). Nonetheless, I’d love to see Thompson take Moore up on the offer, as I think it would become clear very early on in such a debate who has the better grasp of the situation regarding health care, and who is merely peddling “progressive” pablum.

ADDENDUM: Thompson responds…with video.

Two thoughts: First, it’s a brilliant response, not only in terms of content but also the medium…how amazing it is that a (not-yet-)candidate can within hours issue a professional-quality video clip with the ease in which a press release would have been generated in years past. And how amazing it is that it’s not really a novelty. Second: “A mental institution…it’s something you might consider, Michael.” Delightful. It’s hard to imagine Bush coming back with something like that, let alone smoking a cigar with an incidental air that so deliciously flouts Moore’s snarky criticism.

* — Disingenuous not because these firefighters and recovery workers aren’t heroic, but because I don’t believe for a second that Moore actually thinks of them as heroes. They are pawns in his self-promoting antics and “progressive” propagandizing.