Your take on whether there is merit to Fred Thompson's charge that Fox News is biased against his campaign may depend on which candidate you are backing in the race for the 2008 presidential nomination.

If you're Fred-friendly, like A. Renee Daley at Falcons for Fred, Fox's bias is obvious, and Fred gave you reason to cheer when he called them out on it:

Wallace's exchange with Fred Thompson shows us how juvenile Fox News really is.

That's why I refer to it as the Fox Neo-Con Channel. Pro-Giuliani, and Anti-Conservative. Fair and balanced it's not.

If you're Fred-hostile and supporting one of his opponents, like Giuliani shill Jennifer Rubin of American Spectator's AmSpec blog, Fred was wrong (like he always is, eh Jennifer?):

I and others are commenting on Thompson's tantrum at/on Fox. With Hillary's attack on Tim Russert and the general griping about debate moderators I think we have set a record in this primary season for candidates who whine about the media.

Notice Rubin's use of the pejoratives "tantrum" and "whine." Her bias against Fred is rarely stated in such an obvious manner. She's usually much more subtle with her little put-downs, but she's almost always critical of Thompson. When Rubin writes about Rudy, on the other hand, she has to constrain herself to keep from gushing:

A lot of political definition is determined by your friends and by your enemies. Some politicians ask to be judged by their friends. Rudy is just as happy to be judged by his enemies: Arafat, the ACLU, the New York Times and Al Sharpton. I think a dichotomized world view with good and bad guys is what underlies much of his appeal -- and drives his enemies to distraction.

If you are Rick Moran, you're fair and balanced, like Fox News pretends to be. Rick has been both critical and lauditory of Fred's campaign, in each case when Team Thompson deserved it. In this case, he understands what Fred was talking about:

Thompson has a point. While his campaign has been universally criticized for gaffes and missteps early on, it is equally clear Thompson has righted the ship in recent weeks and is starting to generate some momentum.

His policy papers on social security and immigration have been widely praised on the right as being well rounded, thoughtful, and meaty. His tone on the stump has changed as well as he as begun to criticize both Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney for what he calls their "fake" conservatism.

The media, including Fox, have focused largely on the inside the beltway criticism of the campaign and the candidate himself while ignoring the fact that despite the bad start he is still polling in second place nationally among Republicans.

At the very least, this criticism of Fox shows Thompson to have some fire in the belly - something the media has criticized him for lacking. It also shows an independent streak that not too many candidates have demonstrated.

Even some supporters of Fred Thompson's opponents have sided with Fred on this. Right Wing News' John Hawkins has been honest almost to a fault about the fact that he would like nothing better than to see Duncan Hunter win the nomination, but he is equally honest about the remoteness of any chance of that happening. Here's his take on what Fred said:

Is this true? In my opinion, absolutely. In fact, I've had people complain to me privately about the way that Fox News attacks Fred Thompson...

Many Inside-the-Beltway Republicans, including the ones at Fox, have come across as being very hostile to Fred Thompson. Maybe that's because they've succumbed to the same cultural forces that have convinced Republicans in Congress that you have to abandon your conservative principles to win elections. Maybe they're just biased towards Northeastern pols like Romney and Giuliani, because they're living in that part of the country. Maybe most of them had already picked their candidates before Fred got in the race and they're reluctant to change horse mid-stream. But, there has definitely been a weird disconnect between the conservative punditocracy and the conservative grassroots on Fred Thompson. The punditocracy doesn't like him, while he seems to be the single most popular candidate by a good ways amongst conservative activists.

As far as Fred's campaign goes, he's 2nd in national polls, ahead of Romney, third in the first primary in Iowa, ahead of Giuliani, tied for 1st place in South Carolina with Romney, and is likely to be the top Republican candidate in fund raising during the 4th quarter of this year. Fox can sneer at Thompson if they like, but he is in the thick of the race and has a real shot to win the nomination. Will he win? I don't know, but he certainly deserves a lot better than he has gotten from Fox and most of the other beltway insiders in DC.

If you're Fred Thompson or one of his strategists, what do you do about this? There are two obvious choices. Either publicly ignore it and let the captive punditocracy and drive-by media continue to walk all over your campaign, or take 'em on. Team Fred has obviously decided on the latter course. It's not without its risks, of course. Your opponents' captive pundits will try to use it against you, as Rubin is doing on Rudy's behalf. But you really have no other choice if you want to win the nomination, save the Republican party from itself and save the country from the Democrat socialists like Sen. Clinton, who has declared, "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

Jay Cost may have been the first one to see this coming. About a month ago, in his excellent essay "Thompson Goes Electric..." on Real Clear Politics, he wrote:

There are two types of rules in the world. On the one hand, there are real rules. These are the rules that you need to follow, or you will be in big trouble. Stay in school is one of them. You can't do much without a high school diploma - so that is a real rule. On the other hand, there are fake rules. These are rules that most people follow because they think there are negative consequences for disobedience, but actually there are not. In fact, the ones who break the fake rules are often celebrated as trail blazers...

If you have the intelligence to see which rules are real and which are fake, the respectfulness to follow the real rules, and the guts to break the fake rules - you can get ahead in this world. In fact, people will love you for breaking the fake rules.

I think Thompson might be breaking what really are fake rules. As I mentioned above - the perpetual campaign is only a means to the real campaign. You play the game by the rules of the media to earn your way into the real contest. But there may be other ways to get to the real campaign. If there are, the media's rules are indeed fake. There are no consequences to breaking them. If you find another way into the real campaign, you can break them all you like.

This is what Thompson seems to be doing...

I think Thompson has assessed that breaking these rules could win him support. People outside the Beltway, whose daily lives are not regimented by the news cycle, appreciate that the perpetual campaign has reached a point of asininity. Accordingly, a candidate could win supporters over in the real campaign by claiming that he ignored all of these rules, which essentially mandate twenty-two months of nonstop campaigning. This is a twist on running against Washington. It is running against the Washington press corps.* A Republican candidate can do this all the more. After all, the perpetual campaign is mediated by the press, which conservatives loathe. Instead of saying that he broke the media's rules, a candidate instead can say that he broke the Drive By Media's rules. That is a great way to win conservatives over: run against the Drive By's. *(Emphasis mine - JP)

Jennifer Rubin doesn't get this. She wants Fred Thompson to play by the biased media's rules, which are printed on a deck of cards stacked in favor of a Rudy Giuliani v. Hillary Clinton (all New York, all the time) general election:

There are certain fixed rules in politics and one is: if you are complaining about your coverage and media treatment you are losing. Sometimes the complaint is justified... and sometimes it isn't, but complaining about it never works.

I think it will work. The GOP primaries, after all, are dominated by conservatives, and conservatives know all about media bias. They are also perceptive enough to realize that Fox News is not a conservative media outlet. In times past, it had been perceptively less liberal than its competitors. But FNC has been tacking to the left for the last year or so, ever since the time that Rudy Giuliani announced his bid to run for the White House. Purely coincidence, I'm shurrr. Fox and its competition all want a liberal president in 2008. Fox's only difference with its rivals is that it wants a Republican liberal, rather than a Democrat liberal, as preferred by the other drive-bys.

Our friends at Blogs for Fred Thompson get it:

Make no mistake- Fred is running not only against the tide of the mainstream media, but he's also running against the "conservative" punditry and Fox News.

As I said, I think this strategy will work for Fred's team. Conservatives will take to a conservative candidate who stands up to and fights the drive-by media like a Golden Retriever takes to a lake full of waterfowl.

- JP