Dead man walking

No shit.

Fred Thompson's Death Throes --

This is what a disaster looks like: Fred Thompson, the former future "savior" of the Republican Party, looking droopy-eyed and jowly in a black leather jacket and tan ten-gallon hat, wandering like some fake lonesome lost cowboy through the snows of a Hollywood back lot southeastern Iowa in search of voters - and not finding many.

A few minutes earlier, the former actor and would-be conservative hero had emerged from the Smokey Row coffeehouse, where, in his endless search for the only kind of media he can afford - free - he'd sat down with the local newspaper. Otherwise, Smokey Row held at most two dozen largely disinterested patrons. Many of the folks in the quiet coffeehouse ignored Thompson, more interested in their laptops or newspapers than a presidential candidate. [...]

Out in the hallway stood three campaign workers holding clipboards. "Would you like to sign up to caucus for Fred?" they called to the departing voters. Few stopped.

"That's it. The room's empty," one worker reported back to the others. I could see the signup sheets from over their shoulders. One had two names recorded on it, another just a single name, Heywood U. Blowmie. The third was entirely empty. And so this is the way the savior's campaign ends - not with a bang, but with an empty signup sheet.

"Vote for me, or I'll sleep on this flag!"