Former Sen. Fred Thompson is putting together a campaign team to run for president. He came in third among Republicans in a USA Today/Gallup poll. First was Giuliani and second was McCain. Thompson has not formally announced, just said he might run. There is a “Draft Thompson” movement going on.

Giuliani is just a popular guy. People love him for handling the post 9-11 ordeal. He is not very conservative, however. That will hurt him in the primary, but help him in the general election. He has raised $15 million dollars for his campaign so far. Religious conservatives are not at all happy with him, as he supports abortion rights and has been married multiple times.

The former front runner and now number 2, John McCain has raised $12.5 million for his campaign. McCain got good endorsements from four former secretaries of state. Henry Kissinger, retired Gen. Alexander Haig, Lawrence Eagleburger and George Schultz all endorsed McCain. That might help with a few older Republicans, but no one under the age of 50 cares what those guys think and most don’t know who they are. They think Schultz wrote the Peanuts cartoons and that Eagleburger owns a chain of hamburger restaurants. Kissinger they know as that old guy with the German accent, so he might be Arnold’s uncle or something. They also know that McCain defended Don Imus, who insulted the Rutgers basketball team by calling them nappy headed hos, so any vote he might have gotten from women, blacks and basketball players, and, well, anyone with any worry about racism is now history.

Mitt Romney raised a whopping $21 million. That alone will give him a boost among the party loyalists, and allow plenty of t.v. advertising. The question is, will folks vote for a Mormon. He looks good and speaks well, but he wears that funny underwear. Christian conservatives will debate whether his relatively conservative moral views are worth the risk of what they consider a cultic religion in the White House.

Newt Gingrich also jumped in the race. He has called for Attorney General Gonzales to resign over the firing of some Attorney Generals, just like Bill Clinton did without incident. Gingrich has the support of James Dobson for some weird reason, given that the Newt has been married a few times and admits to having an affair with one future missus while being married to the current missus.

Religion always plays a big part in the Republican primary. It’s just hard to see where it will go. Dr. James Dobson says he thinks Fred Thompson is not a Christian. Thompson’s campaign says he is and was baptized in the Church of Christ. I’m not sure if that makes him a Christian or not. I don’t really understand this point, but they believe you can lose your salvation if you sin, so, if you sin, and you lose your salvation, at that point you can’t be a Christian, can you?

Rudy is a Catholic and Mitt is a Mormon.

It’s going to be interesting, isn’t it?