"Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people." -- Fred Thompson

Mike Huckabee, in an interview moments ago on MSNBC: "Right now what we've got to do is to make sure a lot of those people who thought Fred was, as I once said, the Mighty Mouse candidate ... (know) we would be their most logical choice."

The anchor noted that Huckabee is spending lightly in Florida and
asked if Thompson's departure would change that.

"Well, the reason we
made some changes is because we had really beefed up a lot of our field
staff when we were trying to play in New Hampshire, South Carolina,
Florida. After South Carolina, one of the things we wanted to do was go
back to a very lean operation. I've committed that we would not go into
debt for the campaign ... I want to operate the campaign, frankly, like
I'd like to operate the federal treasury."