Fred out but not down

Well, not that it came as a huge surprise, given his poor showing in what was to be a break-out primary in South Carolina, but Fred Thompson bit the bullet today and closed out his short-lived campaign.
A CBS on-line article put it well: "Thompson surely deserves much of the blame he’s going to get for running a lackluster campaign, and people - most of all his supporters - will wonder if his heart was ever really in it. But his campaign always had a bigger obstacle, a 'change deficit' that he could not have overcome without changing who he was. That would have negated his reason for running, but more importantly, it would have cost conservatism a valuable defender."