Fred Thompson: flipflopper

Freddy T., who insinuated Cuban migrants were terrorists after he courted their vote, has just added another flipflopping credit to his political resume. According to the LA Times, the presidential tease is a recent convert to the anti-abortion crusade.

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.

Yes, Thompson's people deny that it ever happened. But read the denial and it's obvious that they're not being totally sincere.

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.

"Thompson says he has no recollection of it"? That's political speak for "it happened but we're going to say it didn't until you have better evidence." You would think a republican wannabe candidate who is so vocal about his stance on abortion would be able to come up with a more staunch denial of whether he ever lobbied for against restricting it.

Freddy T., you're going to make a great republican candidate.

UPDATED TO ADD: SOTP has a great post, also with great comments, about Freddy T's comparison of Scooter Libby with Bill Clinton.