Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.), who has battled leukemia in recent months, is in “serious condition” and is with his family at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., according to a statement released by his family.“At this difficult time, all we can do is give him as much love and support as possible,” his wife, Susan Thomas, said. “The support and prayers of Wyoming folks have made a tremendous difference to us. It has meant everything to Craig, and I know it helps him today.”

Thomas is undergoing a second round of chemotherapy, but his blood cancer has resisted treatment, and he is suffering from infection.

The Hill

While the liberal media is often bemoaned by conservatives, I have usually thought it to be a bit of an overblown case. However, the past twenty minutes of MSNBC have convinced me otherwise.

Segment 1: The End of Hardball

Chris Matthews and his supposedly diverse and unbiased panel talk about how Fred Thompson is so smooth that he will fool all the “regular Americans” into voting for him even though what this country needs is someone like Hillary who makes us feel “uncomfrotable.” There was not one voice on the panel that defended Fred or even offered any reasonable analysis of Fred’s expierence, which is more extensive than all three of the current Democratic front runners. Instead all they talked about is how bad it would be to have another actor President. All he would say are things that would win not things that are necessary for the good of the country. Yet they offered not one iota of proof. If there is any doubt of how bad the liberals are scared of Fred it should be quickly dismissed after seeing this segment.

Segment 2: The Beginning of Keith Olberman’s show

He talks about how Republicans are just using these attacks on American soil to scare people into voting for them. he says that 30+ terrorist attacks that have been foiled have always been released for “maximum political benefit” no matter how ridiculous they are.

It was truly a sight of Bush/Republican/Conservative Derangement Syndrome to behold, where apparently we’re too incompetent to deliver the mail but some how genius enough to arrange all these disparate events to our political benefit without any leaks from government agencies that we were doing this.

He called on Republicans to build “a new coalition” in 2008 that avoids some of the mistakes that led to last November’s disaster. “Some of us came to drain the swamp [in Washington] and made partnership with the alligators,” he said, explaining how the GOP Congress ended up tagged as soft on spending.“Folks, we’re a bit down politically right now, but I think we’re on the comeback trail, and it’s going to start right here,” he assured his listeners. “It’s like the American people are waiting for us,” he continued. “They’re waiting for us to remember why we’re doing what we’re doing, about the ideas that inspired us, to remember who the leaders were that inspired us.”

To that end, Mr. Thompson said the next president should have the courage to talk straight with the American people and bluntly say that Americans will have to confront both the soaring cost of entitlements and the need to remain committed in the war on terror, even when Iraq is “in the rear-view mirror.”

Wall Street Journal

No question about it. This guy definitely gets it. This is the kind of campaign message that can rally the base and bring disgruntled Republicans out of the shadows and Independents back to our side.

A new poll came out today showing Fred Thompson in the lead in South Carolina. I would take it with a grain of salt as its results on both the Democratic and Republican sides are much different than other recent polling. We will need to see more polling to see if this is an outlier or not.

According to the latest Public Policy Polling survey of likely South Carolina primary voters, Sen. Barack Obama leads the Democratic presidential race with the support of 34%, trailed by Sen. Hillary Clinton with 31% and John Edwards with 15%.

On the GOP side, Fred Thompson leads his rivals with 27%, followed by Mitt Romney at 16%, Sen. John McCain at 15%, Rudy Giuliani at 14% and Newt Gingrich at 11%.

H/T PoliticalWire