Thompson Gives no Opinion on Schiavo

Doesn't sound like a conservative to me. Thompson apparently thinks he can get away with not answering the questions on his record. He is already using the 'I don't recall' line. Plenty of Republicans are going to be disappointed with this guy, especially now since he is an announced candidate and has to answer questions:

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson gave no opinion Thursday when asked about efforts by President Bush and Congress to keep Terri Schiavo alive, saying he does not remember details of the right-to-die case that stirred national debate.

Thompson was asked in an interview for Bay News 9's "Political Connections" program whether he thought Congress' intervention to save the life of the brain-damaged woman two years ago was appropriate.

"I can't pass judgment on it. I know that good people were doing what they thought was best," Thompson said. "That's going back in history. I don't remember the details of it."

His approach seems to be, let the States and localities deal with it. That's not going to do:

Thompson, a former Tennessee senator who left office in 2003, did say, "Local matters generally speaking should be left to the locals. I think Congress has got an awful lot to keep up with."

[...]"No Child Left Behind — good concept, I'm all for testing — but it seems like now some of these states are teaching to the test and kind of making it so that everybody does well on the test — you can't really tell that everybody's doing that well. And it's not objective," Thompson said.

Instead, he said the federal government should be providing block grants as long as states set up objective testing programs.

What kind of answer is this on education? His attitude basically is, its your problem--deal with it. This is not conservatism, it's dodging the issue:

[...]A woman asked what he would do for education. He told her decisions on how schools are run should be made by local and state officials, not dictated out of Washington.

Thompson voted for the No Child Left Behind law in 2001, as did most of his fellow senators.

"It's your responsibility," he said. "If you don't like what's going on, don't get in your car and drive by your school board and maybe drive by the capitol and get on an airplane and fly to Washington and say, 'I don't like the way the school down the street is being run.'"