Welcome to The Hoosier Illuminati. Macintosh bigot, clothes horse, motorsports fanatic (as long as they turn right), Anglophile.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance. --Henry Ward Beecher

All of the Republican luminaries are stepping up.

The latest to throw his hat in the ring with Duncan Hunter and Tom Vilsack:  Tommy Thompson.  Ah, his platform takes us back to the halcyon days of the Reagan Administration. 

Thompson’s spokesman expects expanding health-care coverage for the working poor to play a prominent role in Thompson’s White House bid.  He also plans to focus on education.

Thompson currently co-chairs a bipartisan commission with former Gov. Roy Barnes (D-GA) looking at how to improve the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act. The panel, which is supported by the Aspen Institute, is expected to give Congress recommendations in advance of NCLB’s expected renewal in 2007.

As for what should be done with the U.S. troops currently in Iraq, his spokesman says that Thompson hasn’t had to answer that question yet.

You’ve got to be kidding me.  He’s going to run as a Republican on expanded entitlements (in the area of national health care, no less,) enlarging the Department of Education, and he doesn’t have an opinion on Iraq.  He probably already has the endorsement of the Senate Republican leadership.  Please God, deliver to us a Republican with a clue.