Shake-ups with Fred Thompson’s campaign staff?

The rumors are all over the place about ‘high-level’ departures supposedly happening with Team Fred. Chris Cillizza with the Washington Post’s “Fix” blog has the details:

Rumors are flying about more senior level departures from the unofficial presidential campaign of former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.).

But The Fix can knock down one of the major ones: Mary Matalin, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and longtime Republican political operative, is staying put.

Reached in Croatia (are we good or what?), Matalin said she chats daily with the Thompson organization and remains 100 percent on board.

Our sense of the ongoing Thompson staff shuffle is that it is teetering on the brink of becoming just plain bad news. The sharks are circling and whispers about the too-prominent role of Thompson’s wife — Jeri — are everywhere. With news of every departure, the story tilts away from Thompson’s best interests.

The audience for this story remains largely confined within the Beltway for the moment, which is good for Thompson. But staff stirrings can lead to stories about disorganization, unhappiness and general disorder, and that is a narrative that does Thompson’s “campaign” no good, especially as he prepares to launch his bid formally sometime in the next month or so.

The LAT has more on the staff moves being made in the Thompson camp, but one of them should be especially alarming to anyone who opposed the immigration reform bill:

Replacing [acting campaign manager Tom] Collamore will be Randy Enright, who has served as Florida regional political director for the Republican National Committee, and Spencer Abraham, the former senator who lost his bid for re-election in 2000 to Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

Free Republic has a brief piece on why picking Abraham was not the smartest move Thompson’s made right here before he gets ready to ‘officially’ launch his campaign. Thompson himself has a mixed record on the illegal immigration issue.

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