Apparently there’s some swell of support coming along for Fred Thompson as a potential GOP candidate in 2008. The internets have been telling me all about Ron Paul lately, so admittedly the former Law & Order actor slipped under my radar, but as it turns out there’s a significant possibility he’ll run. My only question: so what?

Thompson is not yet an official presidential candidate, though he has established a “testing the waters” committee and is expected to begin raising money this week for a possible run. Yet, a new ABC News poll shows he is already running a strong third, behind former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Arizona Sen. John McCain.

It’s a sign of Republican dissatisfaction with the field. Only 11 percent of Republicans declare themselves “very satisfied” with the current crop of candidates.

First off, this is the party that elected Arnold Schwarzenegger. The fact that he’s popular behind Rudy and McRage doesn’t tell us much since there’s a good chance that the vast majority of Republicans don’t know any other candidates. Ron Paul is only a big name if you read Fark and similar sites, and I doubt the average voter has any idea who Sam Brownback or Mitt Romney are outside of names. Throw a guy from Law and Order at them and sure he’ll get some good numbers.

Secondly, hate to break it to right-leaning voters, but the bad crop of candidates isn’t a result of bad candidate choosing, it’s a result of having failed platform after failed platform and the party throwing the best they got out there. Remember GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. It’s not that the party has failed to produce good candidates, it’s that the party is a clump of failed policies and anyone representing them is going to look bad. That’s why the Democratic list is golden pretty much back to front.

You can take a look at the man’s policies here, Obviously, as I’m a lefty and he’s a righty, we don’t agree on much. Still, I don’t get the allure. I’m with him here and there, for example we agree on abortion for the most part, I agree on the legality and notifying parents for under-18 but think there should be government funds. I’m with him on securing our borders before we worry about immigration policies. Elsewhere, we have issues.

I must say, it amuses me. As I read these guys’ platforms, I wonder if someday I will identify with “conservative” candidates not because I’ve drifted left, but because the right has drifted left to the point where I agree with them. I’d be willing to bet that’s how it works in general. The person stays in one place, but as the political paradigm shifts to the left, the person is on the right with the exact same platforms that put them on the left when they were young.

Eager to fight off accusations of being crazy thanks to his beliefs that the Holocaust was a myth, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to come out and declare that Israel’s “regime” is on the brink of destruction.

Ahmadinejad said last summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah showed for the first time that the “hegemony of the occupier regime (Israel) had collapsed, and the Lebanese nation pushed the button to begin counting the days until the destruction of the Zionist regime,” IRNA quoted him as saying.

“God willing, in the near future we will witness the destruction of the corrupt occupier regime,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying during a speech to foreign guests mostly from African, Arab and neighboring countries who attended ceremonies marking the 18th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who is known as the father of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Now, I do want to make a clarification because I believe that many are going to misinterpret that statement. Obviously he’s not saying that Israel is going to be destroyed via a nuclear weapon or somesuch, just that the “regime” is going to be destroyed. It’s a political statement, not one describing some lake of fire that will engulf Israel.

I do find it amusing, though, that the same people who think that Iran’s statements concerning Israel’s potential eradication are evidence that they’re all lunatic nutballs are the same ones who think that the Middle East as a whole should be nuked into a crater. Hypocrisy much?