Although I'm sure that this has already been covered amply and admirably in previous comments.

Thompson played a tough-guy DA on Law and Order and a tough-guy fleet commander in The Hunt for Red October (among other such roles, I'm sure, as I'm not exactly a devoted fan although I have enjoyed his purely dramatic roles, AS dramatic roles), is big and stocky, has a deep sonorous and serious-sounding voice, and likes to act the tough-guy in public. And Repubs eat it up, as they did with Bush's faux cowboy image and before that Reagan's elder cowboy image, also of course fake. Repubs eat this shit up like crazy.

They LOVE this faux macho projection bullshit because it maps their own self-created images of themselves as being smarter and tougher than deep down they fear that they actually are. It's all about massive overcompensation for their lack (or perceived lack) of manly qualities. Why face the frightening prospect of not having them when you can create and embrace a phony alternative reality in which you indisputibly have them?

And what better way to do this than by embracing someone who projects such phony machismo so well? In fact it's a double form of phony machismo. Not only do you yourself not have to possess these macho qualities, but you don't even have to bother to fake them yourself--just embrace someone who does, and like a Papal indulgence you are now officially macho yourself. How cheap and easy! Macho chest-beaters like Thompson and Giuliani are for weak, insecure AND lazy people who deep down loath themselves due to their feelings of inadequacy.

This is so obvious that it wouldn't even be worth noticing or commenting on if these people weren't viable contenders for the presidency, and they didn't have so many devoted followers, be they rank and file wingnuts, RWNM armchair warriors, or Stockholm Syndrome-afflicted (or cynically and creepily opportunistic) media pundits and journalists. It's quite ironic that a significant minority of citizens of the country that was most responsible for defeating 20th century fascism and totalitarian authoritarianism would embrace such values and possess similar psychological tendencies themselves.

Personally, I think that this tendency is ebbing for now. It's proven itself beyond any reasonable doubt to be not only vastly inadequate to the task of actually defending the country from its actual enemies and threats (both natural and human), but to actually amplify and intensify those very threats. And the rest of the country has increasingly come to see through this transparent and hollow macho posturing as the fake, pathetic and dangerous illusion that it clearly is and always has been, and is rejecting it broadly.

Chest-beating Bushism is dying if not dead as a majoritarian political "ideology", in my opinion--and any Democrat who embraces any component of it, especially, ironically, Hillary, is kidding themselves if they think that the public is still into this. That doesn't mean that the country is turning dovish. But it has rejected fake and stupid hawkism--i.e. chickenhawkism. The person who will be elected president will likely be the person who can best come up with, present and project some viable and compelling middle course between these two extremes, on a policy and personal level. I.e. strong, but responsibly so, powerful, but wisely so.

Who knows, I may be wrong, and we may yet see a president (Fref) Thompson or Giuliani, especially if we're attacked again and they play it just right, and Dems act like sheep yet again. But I'm betting that this doesn't happen, and that this macho Jack Bauer posturing will go nowhere once the GOP convention next summer is over. The country is ready to move on, and these guys either don't get it, or don't see any choice but to do this if they expect to get the nomination (which makes me suspect that whoever wins the GOP nomination will tack back to the moderate center for the general election).

God I can't wait for this silly and destructive era to end. It's just so stupid, and unnecessary.

Ok, I'll do them one better. One of the justifications for invasion offered by the supporters of this war is that Saddam was a brutal dictator who tortured and killed his own people and that removing him from power was a morally justifiable and necessary thing to do. Aside from the obvious hypocrisy of having done this by, um, torturing and killing people ourselves (oh, but they were all bad guys!), such a "justification" (i.e. rationalization) begs the question of why they haven't advocated the same for all of the world's other brutal dictators and regimes, e.g. North Korea, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, etc.? Someone please explain that one to me. Something to do with geopolitics and oil, perhaps?

Once again, as with illegal immigration, gay rights and marriage, abortion, evolution and global warming, the wingnut right reveals its profound and immense fear of people and ideas that are alien and threatening to them, which they can deal with only by ignoring, denying or destroying (by proxy, of course, since they themselves are too delicate to do it themselves) them--the latter being preferable, having the added merit of making them feel so manly and vital (even though, again, it is not they themselves who do this, but convenient others who will conveniently do the killing, torturing and dying for them, but they will nevertheless reserve most of the credit for themselves for being so bold and resolute and virtuous in standing up for "freedom").

Morally defective, emotionally stunted, psychologically warped man-boys who cheer on the most despicable and disgusting of human activities in the name of concepts that they themselves don't even begin to understand and do not actually embrace, in order to gain a fleeting and entirely illusory feeling of triumph, security and masculine vindication. You really can't sink much further into the muck of moral depravity and insubstantiality. Is there anything more pathetic than a self-styled Jack Bauer wannabe by proxy?