Maryland for Fred Thompson

Thompson is running the kind of campaign — substantive, policy-laden, not based on gimmicks or sound-bites — that pundits and journalists say they want, but he’s getting no credit for it from the people who claim that’s what they want.

Fred Thompson is doing what a whole lot of us have wanted politicians to do for a very long time: step away from the dog and pony shows, meet us as equals, and respect us enough to tell us exactly what you want to do and how you want to do it. He ought to get a lot of credit for that. We should be insisting that the other candidates do it, too. Perhaps we can send that message by giving him a few primary wins.

This reporter - an Iowan by birth - propounded this theory: Most candidates for public office are Type A personalities (as are most of the people who work for them and most of the people who cover them). Iowans are not, by self-selection, Type A personalities.

As he described it, if someone wants to be a stock broker he or she can make an excellent living in Des Moines or Davenport. But if they want to be among the top people in their industry they have to move to Dallas, or Chicago, or New York.

Farmers who plant a corn seed in the Spring have to wait months before that seed sprouts, grows, flowers, fruits and is ready for harvesting.

No amount of shouting, stomping around, and exhortation will speed up that process so Type A personalities don’t tend to stay in farming.

It may well be, this reporter held, that Thompson’s personality matches up better than anyone else’s in the GOP field with the typical Iowa caucus-goer.

The former senator from Tennessee has oriented his whole bus tour around marketing his right-wing credentials.

And it appears from campaign events that his remaining potential supporters are hard-core conservatives — people deciding between him and the two GOP front-runners, especially Huckabee.

Bill Salier, for example, served as Tom Tancredo’s state chairman before the Colorado congressman dropped out of the race.

A staunch conservative, Salier’s top two issues are abortion (he is strongly against abortion rights) and immigration (he wants to stem the influx of undocumented immigrants).

Tancredo, then, was a natural fit, and Salier committed to him before Thompson entered the race.

But when Tancredo dropped out and endorsed Mitt Romney, Salier didn’t follow.

To Salier’s mind, the former Massachusetts governor was too soft on abortion and immigration, so he joined Thompson’s campaign.

Since then, he has been on the trail for Thompson in Iowa, introducing the candidate at a supporter’s house in Hampton on Sunday and at a radio town hall Monday morning in Charles City.