Thompson Mania has hit the airways, and he seems to be pulling some strong numbers out of the gate. A few places are trumpeting it as Romney is somehow falling down to Thompson, this is nonsense.

First the Iowa Poll:

Iowa
McCain - 29% (23)
Giuliani - 29% (31)
F Thompson - 12% (n/a)
Romney - 10% (8)
Gingrich - 7% (16)
All others - 1% or less

(Numbers in parenthesis are last months poll numbers)

Yes, this poll has Thompson up 2 points over Romney at 12%. Note though that Romney went up by 2 points. Gingrich on the other hand takes dive from 16% to 7%!! Quite the drop. Giuliani drops by two, and McCain goes up by 6 (a good score for McCain.

Now lets look at New Hampshire.

New Hampshire
McCain - 23% (26)
Giuliani - 19% (27)
Romney - 17% (15)
Gingrich - 11% (10)
F Thompson - 10% (n/a)
All others - 2% or less
Undecided - 15%

McCain drops (3%) as does Giuliani (by a tremendous amount- 8%) Meanwhile Mitt gains again, and is a full 7 points ahead of Thompson. If you took this poll, Iowa and Ohio (the three polls people are citing doom for Mitt) Romney is at 11% and Thompson is at 8.5% with Romney gaining a 2.5% between Iowa and NH. The Big looser is Giuliani who seems to be shriveling up from a diet of no substantive ideas and an unvetted background.

They also included useless TX and AR polls that tell us Huckabee is well received in Arkansas...

Texas (no previous poll)
Giuliani - 30%
McCain - 20%
Romney - 13%
F Thompson - 12%
Gingrich - 11%
All others - 2% or less

Arkansas (no previous poll)
Huckabee - 40%
McCain - 21%
Giuliani - 12%
Gingrich - 8%
F Thompson - 5%
Romney - 4%
All others - 1% or less

What my guess is (and only time will tell- not placing any bets) that Thompson will spell doom for Giuliani. Giuliani support can be classified as wide yet shallow- like a wading pool- good to get your feet wet, not enough to immerse yourself in. People who like Romney like him a lot. Giuliani plays the Law and Order Candidate, Thompson is the Law and Order star.

Thompson is untested, and the things to keep in mind are that Thompson has virtually no accomplishments to his name, has changed a positions on abortion himself (a good thing, but something to note), was widely held to be a lazy senator (something no one has ever accused Mitt of) and left politics because he got bored and went to Hollywood. His current run bears many resemblances to Rudy a few months ago. I see Thompson as having two routes to take:

Route Rudy- Sit and do nothing, let your name ride itself. Provides momentary gratification, long term failure. When the lights come on and the hangover from the night before wears off, people will feel a strong sense of buyers remorse when they start searching for positions and ideas and find none.

Start talking substantive now- even more risky. What is the substance behind Thompson? No one knows except his ability to argue for CFR on behalf of McCain. His ideas would have to be different then Romney's yet more enlightening and ariculated better. Basically he would have to start walking the walk now. According to Novak, this doesn't appear to be a real possibility in the near future, thus making RouteRudy the real possibility.