Found via The Corner an official statement from the Thompson Campaign:

In an interview with CNN today, former Senator Fred Thompson’s position on constitutional amendments concerning gay marriage was unclear.

Thompson believes that states should be able to adopt their own laws on marriage consistent with the views of their citizens.

He does not believe that one state should be able to impose its marriage laws on other states, or that activist judges should construe the constitution to require that.

If necessary, he would support a constitutional amendment prohibiting states from imposing their laws on marriage on other states.

Fred Thompson does not support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

As Hugh Hewitt points out this means Romney is the only top-tier Republican who supports a gay-marriage amendment.

From the Associated Press Fred Thompson, expected to announce his candidacy Labor Day week has a new campaign manager:

Bill Lacy, a former strategist for Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and Republican National Committee, will run day-to-day operations of Thompson’s committee to “test the waters” for a presidential run.

“He turned around my campaign for Senate in 1994 and, as I move toward a decision on whether to run for president, I am confident he will take our operations to the next level,” Thompson, the former Tennessee senator and “Law & Order” actor, said in a statement.

You always want to meet expectations. Time and again I see it with stocks. Company is doing well, they make good products, have a nice market share, everyone is talking about how great they are doing, they give a big prediction about how well they will do in the next quarter. Then the end of the quarter comes and they don’t meet expectations, company’s stock tanks. Doesn’t matter what they’ve done, doesn’t matter what they will do, it just matters they didn’t meet their goal.

Meanwhile another company that has bad products, bad market share, bad press, bad everything makes a low prediction, they do better than expected, their stock rises. This is the expectations game and it works the same in politics.

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“It’s now become an open joke among people in the consultant community and political movers and shakers that the senator’s wife is really running the campaign,” said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster and strategist. “The spouse needs to be an integral part of the campaign but it is never a good thing when the spouse runs the campaign because the spouse is never objective.”

Check out the whole article.

Jonathan Martin at the Politico is reporting that another Fred Thompson staffer Tom Frechette is leaving. Frechette was effective serving as campaign manager Tom Collamore’s deputy but now that Collamore is out as campaign manager Freschette is moving on.

Both are reported to have had trouble dealing with the heavy influence of Thompson’s wife Jeri in the campaign.

Found via Wonkette