The Issues and Where Senator Thompson Stands

Abortion

"I am prolife."– Fred Thompson
"Roe v. Wade was bad law and bad medical science." – Fred Thompson

Terrorism

"I warned that there should be no place on Earth where terrorists can rest and train and practice their deadly skills. I meant it. I said that we would act with others, if possible, and alone if necessary to ensure that terrorists have no sanctuary anywhere."– Fred Thompson

Gay Rights

"We ought to be a tolerant nation. I think we ought to be tolerant people. But we shouldn't set up special categories for anybody. And I'm for the rights of everybody, including gays, but not any special rights. " – Fred Thompson

Civil Unions

"That ought to be left up to the states. I personally do not think that that is a good idea, but I believe in many of these cases where there's real dispute in the country, these things are not going to be ever resolved. People are going to have different ideas. That's why we have states. We ought to give great leeway to states and not have the federal government and not have the Supreme Court of the United States making social policy that's contrary to the traditions of this country and changing that overnight. And that's what's happened in a lot of these areas. " – Fred Thompson

Gay Marriage

"Marriage is between a man and a woman, and I don't believe judges ought to come along and change that. " – Fred Thompson

Gun Control

"I'm against gun control generally. You know, you check my record. You'll find I'm pretty consistent on that issue… The court basically said the Constitution means what it says, and I agree with that."– Fred Thompson

Campaign Finance Reform

"I came from the outside to Congress. And it always seemed strange to me. We've got a situation where people could give politicians huge sums of money, which is the soft money situation at that time, and then come before those same politicians and ask them to pass legislation for them. I mean, you get thrown in jail for stuff like that in the real world. And so I always thought that there was some reasonable limitation that ought to be put on that, and you know, looking back on history, Barry Goldwater in his heyday felt the same thing. So that's not a non-conservative position, although I agree that a lot of people have interpreted it that way. " – Fred Thompson

Illegal Immigration

"[Immigration has become] an impossible situation to deal with. I mean, there's really no good solution. So what do you do? You have to start over. Well, I'm concerned about the next 12 million or 20 million. So that's why enforcement, and enforcement at the border, has to be primary. I think most people feel disillusioned after 1986 when we had this deal offered to them before, and now we're insisting that, you know, we solve the security problem first, and then we'll talk about what to do with regard to other things." – Fred Thompson

Iraq and Afganistan

I would do essentially what the president's doing. I know it's not popular right now, but I think we have to look down the road and consider the consequences of where we are. We're the leader of the free world whether we like it or not. People are looking to us to test our resolve and see what we're willing to do in resolving the situation that we have there. People think that if we hadn't gone down there, things would have been lovely. If Saddam Hussein was still around today with his sons looking at Iran developing a nuclear capability, he undoubtedly would have reconstituted his nuclear capability. Things would be worse than what they are today. We've got to rectify the mistakes that we've made. We went in there too light, wrong rules of engagement, wrong strategy, placed too much emphasis on just holding things in place while we built up the Iraqi army, took longer than we figured. Wars are full of mistakes. You rectify things. I think we're doing that now. We're coming in with good people. We're coming in with a lot of different people. I know General Petraeus from when he was in Tennessee at Fort Campbell. He believes in the plan. He's convinced me that they can do the job. Why would we not take any chance, even though there's certainly no guarantees, to not be run out of that place? I mean, we've got to take that opportunity and give it a chance to work. – Fred Thompson

Foreign Oil Dependancy

We can't ever be totally independent of it, but we can do some things to make it a lot better. We're going to have to look at fuel emission standards and things of that nature, things that we don't like to look at. And things have got to be on the table, because we can't keep funding a part of the world that's causing us so much problems. – Fred Thompson

Foreign Policy

“It's not preordained that we're going to remain the strongest and freest nation in the history of the world. We've got to do some things well. We've got to do some things differently.” – Fred Thompson