A slick play of law and order

Fred Thompson is really going to run for president. Good for him. Jim Galloway over at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Political Insider blog puts together some interesting pieces, largely drawing from a comment on Daily Kos, noting that by announcing his candidacy publicly on September 6th, he doesn't have to "officially" declare with the FEC until September 21st, meaning he doesn't have to form his campaign committee until after the October 1 filing deadline for fundraising.

[From Daily Kos] By delaying the filing of his organizational papers until books have closed on the third quarter of 2007, Thompson arguably will not have to file any disclosure reports with the FEC until January 31, 2008, after the Republican primaries/caucuses in WY, IA, NH, NV, FL …..

[From Political Insider] That poor financial showing that Thompson made this summer — the one where his goal was $5 million and he showed $3 million? Doesn’t look like it’ll happen again.

Clever clever.

My own assessment of the Fred campaign is that he hurt himself by not jumping in when his popularity was really at its peak about a month ago. As Galloway describes it:

His candidacy, or non-candidacy, had been taking on the feeling of a bad anxiety dream — the one where you’re trying to punch out an emergency phone number, but you keep hitting the wrong buttons.

An apt description. Had he announced right before - or even after - the Iowa straw poll, he would have stolen the thunder from Romney and Huckabee, and probably pushed some of the lower-tier folks out of the race, who had to be holding out hope that all the "will he, won't he" would lean to the latter.

Despite that assessment, taking his questionable fundraising off the table is a slick move of taking full advantage of the law, and I give credit to that. We'll see how it works out.