Out-going Tennessee Senator Bill Frist, the surgeon-turned-politician, has decided not to run for president. Brian Kennedy, his top guy on the ground in Iowa, just chatted with Radio Iowa. "I think it isn’t the last we’ve heard from Bill Frist," Kennedy said.
What attracted you to him as a candidate?
"Well, first was the experience, I mean, sombody’s who’s been in there in Washington working on the critical national security issues that confront the country but secondly was his background in health care. He was somebody who’d spent 20 years as a practicing physician, as a brain surgeon," Kennedy replied. "The perspective he could bring to really challenging the country to take on the health care debate I thought would be a critical to his success."
When Kennedy was asked what he intends to do now in the 2008 cycle, he responded jokingly: "I am to meet with my advisors later today and likely to announce my candidacy sometime later this week." As I laughed, he said "Weren’t you asking if I was going to run in the Caucuses? If Vilsack is, why not me?"
Kennedy, as you may recall, is a long-time GOP insider — former state party chairman, Branstad re-election manager in 1994, former aide to Lamar Alexander and John McCain in their races for the White House.
About O.Kay Henderson
Kay is a founding member of the Radio Iowa network newsroom. In 1994, she became the network’s news director. She’s a featured reporter and commentator on Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press,” and the 2002 recipient of the Shelley Award.
Hey, honey, come look at this. Some fascist-thug Republinazi in Iowa is disappointed that some fascist-thug Republinazi in the Senate is too much of a coward to run on his record of constitutional and statute criminality for president of the United States. What a howler.