Fred Thompson shoots his horse in the starting gate

TPM:

Fred D. Thompson, who is campaigning for president as an antiabortion Republican, accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and several people familiar with the matter.

A spokesman for the former Tennessee senator denied that Thompson did the lobbying work. But the minutes of a 1991 board meeting of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. say that the group hired Thompson that year.

His task was to urge the administration of President George H. W. Bush to withdraw or relax a rule that barred abortion counseling at clinics that received federal money, according to the records and to people who worked on the matter.

More TPM:

Following up on Josh's item about Fred Thompson lobbying for pro-choice policies on behalf of a family-planning group, the story represents a double threat to the nascent presidential hopeful.

First, this is a major new challenge for Thompson, who has struggled a bit to prove his anti-abortion bona fides, to prove to the far-right GOP base that he's sufficiently right-wing.

Taking up the defense for Thompson, however, is John Hinderaker, who makes a passionate case that a lobbyist should not necessarily be judged by his or her clients. Lobbyists, like lawyers, may take on patrons with whom they disagree.

That's nice. A conservative merc can fight against all they believe in, as long as when running for office they work to undo those works...Yeah, you know? That sounds exactly like a classic Republican.

(I do feel the need to point out I am being facetious. There are many fine Republicans...and many that give the party a bad name.)

But the story here is not just that Thompson lobbied for a pro-choice cause, but that he's vociferously denying it now.

Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo adamantly denied that Thompson worked for the family planning group. "Fred Thompson did not lobby for this group, period," he said in an e-mail.

In a telephone interview, he added: "There's no documents to prove it, there's no billing records, and Thompson says he has no recollection of it, says it didn't happen." In a separate interview, John H. Sununu, the White House official whom the family planning group wanted to contact, said he had no memory of the lobbying and doubted it took place.

The response is ... odd. The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn. produced the minutes of a 1991 board meeting that say the group hired Thompson to lobby on the group's behalf. Judith DeSarno, who was president of the family planning association at the time, said Thompson lobbied for the group for several months, and noted the multiple meetings and conversations she had with Thompson about his progress in lobbying for her cause. What's more, the LA Times spoke to "three other people [who] recalled Thompson lobbying against the rule on behalf of the family planning association."

Former Rep. Michael D. Barnes (D-Md.), Thompson's former law-firm colleague, helped connect Thompson to the family-planning group in the first place, and said it was "absolutely bizarre" for Thompson to deny his lobbying work.

"I talked to him while he was doing it, and I talked to [DeSarno] about the fact that she was very pleased with the work that he was doing for her organization," Barnes said. "I have strong, total recollection of that. This is not something I dreamed up or she dreamed up. This is fact."

If Thompson wanted to make the Hinderaker-like argument that he took on a client with which he disagreed, he could try to make the case and hope the Dobson crowd bought it. But it's far more peculiar for Thompson to simply deny the work outright.

Getting away with lobbying for a pro-choice client is an awkward hurdle. Getting caught lying about it can dog a presidential campaign for quite a while.

Maybe he plans to come out and claim he was secretly sabotaging the family planning group from within...Yeah, yeah. that's the ticket.

TPM:

...

Any comment, senator?

Thompson gave an oblique response when asked about the matter, first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

"I'd just say the flies get bigger in the summertime. I guess the flies are buzzing," said Thompson, who is considering running for president as a social conservative. He refused comment on whether he recalled doing the work.

That ought to clear things up.

I don't know about you, but I feel mollified.

But I am sure desperate Republicans are rocking to and fro, saying, "Good enough, good enough..."