Spread the word - Fred Thompson is a Washington Insider

[ck4829]

Republican Fred Thompson, who likes to cast himself in the role of Washington outsider, has a long history as a political insider who earned more than $1 million lobbying the federal government.

As a lobbyist for more than 20 years, billion-dollar corporations paid Thompson for his access to members of Congress and White House staff. During that time he was close to two Senate majority leaders, both from his home state of Tennessee — his political mentor Howard Baker and, more recently, his former colleague Bill Frist.

During Baker's tenure, Thompson lobbied for a savings-and-loan deregulation bill that helped hasten the industry's collapse and a failed nuclear energy project that cost taxpayers more than a billion dollars.

More recently, while Frist led the Senate, Thompson earned more than $750,000 lobbying for a British reinsurance company that wanted to limit its liability from asbestos lawsuits.

That history as a Washington insider is at odds with the image Thompson has sought to convey to voters. When he first ran for the Senate in 1993, Thompson cast himself in the part of the gruff, plainspoken everyman, leased a red pickup truck and drove around Tennessee in his shirt sleeves.

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/189101

[HereSince1628]

1. Freddie is the perfect guy to get the K Street project back on track

for the GOP.

[Solly Mack]

2. well duh

but then so was Shrub and idiots still believed otherwise

[pscot]

3. Eliminate the middle man

Send a lobbyist to the Whitehouse.