Quotes of the Day

For those not paying close attention, and others simply in denial, it is worth taking a moment to review just how bleak life has become for members of the Grand Old Party. Last fall Republicans were swept from power in both houses of Congress. This summer the incumbent Republican President is setting standards for unpopularity not seen since the Nixon Watergate era. In recent weeks the campaign of the war-hero Senator who was once the party's presumptive nominee has all but collapsed in debt and blame. The latest financial reports show that the G.O.P.'s always reliable money advantage has vaporized, with Democratic candidates out-raising Republicans by more than $100 million for next year's federal elections. Adding a little salt to his party's wounds, Newt Gingrich, leader of a Republican revolution that seems but a misty memory, summed up the current field of would-be G.O.P. Presidents as "pygmies."

Faced with this litany of despair, many Republican faithful, from the grass roots to the Capitol, have concluded that Fred Thompson, the preternaturally avuncular actor and former Senator from Tennessee, is the cure-all for their party's ills. Thompson has yet to enter the presidential race. He has, in fact, postponed until after Labor Day an official announcement that was supposed to be made in July. And yet Thompson already shares front-runner status with former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani in some national polls of G.O.P. voters. "People are not inspired; everyone's flat-lining," says Ken Duberstein, former chief of staff for Ronald Reagan. "Right now, Fred is all things to all people. Everyone's waiting to see if he can live up to expectations."

With those expectations casting Thompson as Reagan reincarnate, it's easy to understand why he's staying out of the race for as long as he can. The next Republican debate takes place Aug. 5 in Des Moines, to be followed six days later by the Iowa straw poll in Ames, an expensive faux election that measures the muscle of a candidate's organization and the thickness of his wallet more than his actual appeal to caucus voters. Thompson advisers decided that the risk of underperforming at either of these high-profile events was too great — and outweighed any advantages that would be gained by launching the campaign over the summer. As one Thompson partisan noted, John McCain's spectacular fall from Establishment front-runner to underfunded underdog proves how hard it is to sustain a lead, month after month, without faltering.

Thompson will spend the rest of the summer raising money, which he was scheduled to do conspicuously at a donor event in Washington on July 28. Another advantage to waiting: the longer he remains an unofficial candidate, the longer NBC can air reruns of Law & Order featuring Thompson as Manhattan DA Arthur Branch without running afoul of the equal-time provision of federal campaign law. "His timing has been brilliant so far," insists Tennessee Congressman Zach Wamp, who led the effort to convince Thompson he should run. "While he's been waiting, some candidates have been falling and the others haven't been moving. Frankly, there's been a lot of advantages to [it]. He's probably gotten more attention not being a candidate than he would have being a candidate."

Not all the attention has been adoring. The Los Angeles Times reported that Thompson had once worked as a lobbyist for an abortion-rights group; his spokesman categorically denied the charge and Thompson himself dismissed the story. Records soon turned up showing that Thompson had billed the group for nearly 20 hours of work in the early 1990s, an awkward revelation for a candidate positioning himself as a straight shooter and true conservative. And even before launching, the Thompson campaign has experienced its first staff shake-up. After clashing with Thompson's wife Jeri, acting campaign manager (and close Thompson friend) Tom Collamore was ousted in favor of former Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham and Randy Enwright, a veteran G.O.P. strategist. "I do worry that Jeri is the one really running his campaign," says a House Republican who describes himself as "likely" to support Thompson. "She's smart, but that could be a recurring problem."

Thompson is also playing in a gray legal zone by postponing his announcement. Currently his noncampaign campaign is a "testing the water" committee registered as a 527, a tax-exempt group with disclosure requirements far less stringent than those of a real campaign organization. Federal election law requires Thompson to declare himself a candidate once he decides to plunge into the water, which — given that he has signed up more than two dozen staffers, opened two offices and appointed his second and third campaign managers — he seems to have done.

While Thompson's undeclared campaign retools, raises money and figures out how to live up to the hype surrounding his candidacy, his potential opponents are busy adjusting to the new dynamics of the race. With a newly frugal and lean campaign operation, McCain hopes to stay alive in the race long enough to merit a second look from donors and voters. He still polls well enough in South Carolina and New Hampshire that his chances can't be written off entirely. But Thompson has hurt his old Senate ally more than any other candidate, drawing money and supporters away from McCain when he needs them most.

Like McCain, Mitt Romney is a prodigious spender of campaign cash. Unlike McCain, Romney can dip into a huge personal fortune to supplement his fund-raising — and has done so. The former Massachusetts Governor is also the only Republican candidate in the top tier whose poll numbers have been inching upward since the beginning of the year. This is especially true in the lead-off states of Iowa and New Hampshire, where he currently tops the field, a fact that causes some strategists to declare Romney the race's "real front-runner." It is not an unreasonable claim if you consider national polls more or less irrelevant. "You have to accept that Iowa and New Hampshire are still going to have an impact," says Romney spokesman Kevin Madden. "We're far ahead of anybody... in terms of organizing in those states."

But Romney's strength in Iowa and New Hampshire masks his weakness in other key states like South Carolina, where social conservatives are likely to view with suspicion his relatively recent shift to the right on abortion and gay rights. Even more of a problem is his Mormon faith, which some evangelical Protestants consider a cult. Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, a second-tier contender who is vying for the evangelical vote, has been challenging Romney's claim to be the G.O.P.'s family-values candidate. The Brownback attacks and the Romney rebuttals have been getting far more coverage in religious media than in the secular press.

If Romney and McCain are pursuing similar, state-by-state strategies, Giuliani is trying to take advantage of the front-loaded primary schedule to run as a national candidate. Though his standing in the national polls has been slowly declining since he announced his candidacy in February, Giuliani has defied predictions that his campaign would crater as soon as G.O.P. voters discovered that the hero of 9/11 was pro-choice, pro-gay and pro–gun control. He is betting that even if he loses in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, he can still amass enough delegates with wins in Florida, New York, California and other big, early-primary states to swamp his opponents and cruise to victory.

The problem for Giuliani — and the rest of the field — is that Thompson has the same strategy, and the Tennessean's Southern drawl and conservative voting record are likely to play well in South Carolina. If Thompson can keep enthusiasm high until he enters the race in the fall, he might be able to turn what was supposed to be a marathon race for the nomination into a relatively brief, four-month sprint. And while Thompson may not, in the end, be all things to all Republicans, at 6 ft. 5 in. and at least 225 lbs., he definitely is no pygmy.

• James Carney