Mike Thompson: “Well, I do not want to delve too deeply into the motivations of anyone. People can have different reasons for their…”

“Well, I do not want to delve too deeply into the motivations of anyone. People can have different reasons for their thoughts. But it does puzzle me because, you know, in looking back at the history of this thing, some of the leading Republicans, some of the leading conservatives, as well as some of the leading liberals and Democrats in this body, have all joined together on some of these basic things. What I think the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from Wisconsin and I are trying to do here is kind of get back to where we were 20, 25 years ago. We do not have that situation now. I hope the answer to your question is not that we see this current situation as an opportunity for incumbents. And we know that most of the money goes to incumbents. I have been a challenger; I have been an incumbent, like we all have. And we know how the system works and operates. And that is fine. That will always be the case. We have some certain advantages, inherent advantages, in terms of news coverage and things of that nature that I have no intention of willingly giving up. And I think it is fine that I have those advantages. But the money situation has gotten out of hand, and incumbents have such an advantage there that about 90 percent of all the kind of money that we are talking about--well, that is not the correct figure either--but the great majority of the money we are talking about now goes into incumbents.”