The Iraqi Quagmire will be nearly six years old when President ____ takes the oath of office in January 2009; the polar ice caps will have further melted; New Orleans will still be suffering from post-Katrina neglect; failing infrastructure will still be collapsing; our dependence on fossil fuels will be virtually undiminished; 10 to 20 million undocumented immigrants, and millions more legal immigrants, will still be languishing in a broken system awaiting legislative action; baby boomers will still be wondering whether Social Security is solvent; and 47 million Americans will be without health insurance. Is Fred Thompson making headlines because of his Iraq policy? Is John McCain again in hot water because he said Iraq is a Muslim Nation? No. With one eye on McCain The Baptist, Fred Thompson knows that he has to dislodge Mitt Romney as the only alternative for the right wing base of the Republican party, so he positions himself as the anti-gay-marriage candidate, though for some reason he cannot bring himself to do it without complicating the message. (Perhaps he cynically aims for more press by touting his position as The Third Way, explaining why he strategically claims to have (unnamed) right wing conservative backing.) Thompson takes the inartful and illogical position that state courts should not be allowed to interpret their own constitutions if in so doing they rule that there is a constitutional right for gay and lesbian couples to be married like everyone else. Thompson would allow state legislatures to extend equal marriage rights to same-sex couples, however. Why Thompson thinks that limiting the federal government's power means using the U.S. Constitution to tie state courts in knots is beyond me. Giuliani is rejected outright by the Christian fundamentalists, with good reason. He is definitely not one of them. He will not promise to preside over a theocracy. McCain's chances have dissolved like [insert your favorite metaphor here]. Gingrich would have run for President of the United States but claims disingenuously that as he spent the last year establishing a non-profit, conservative think tank that nobody has heard of, he now does not want to remove himself as titular head of that organization. Gingrich leaves the field open on the right, and Thompson seems to be willing to waltz with the wingnuts.