With all eyes on Fred Thompson as he gives a keynote speech tonight (11:30PM EST), I was reminded of a scheme I hatched a couple weeks ago to create a parallel campaign for Arthur Branch for President.  Branch, Thompson’s Law & Order alter ego, is probably the way most of America knows Thompson now.  With that in mind, I thought that if I could confuse the electorate with an Arthur Branch campaign, whenever they saw Thompson speak, they would think they were watching Branch.  Then when voters went to the polls looking to vote for Branch, they wouldn’t find him on the ballot, just this unfamiliar Fred Thompson.

Of course this was all meant to be funny.  I try to be funny a lot.  I succeed sometimes.  So when I checked GoDaddy for ArthurBranch2008.com a couple weeks ago, there it was, ripe for the plucking.  But I hesitated.

They say, “He who hesitates is lost.”  It couldn’t be truer.  Today, after reading about the anticipation for Thompson’s speech tonight, I thought, “Now is the time to really buy that URL and launch my campaign to draft Arthur Branch.”  Sadly, the URL is gone, sucked up by some anonymous buyer using Domains by Proxy to cover tracks.

Opportunity lost, for me. 

But is the opportunity lost?  Did Thompson’s team buy the URL?  Or was it snagged by some other comedian-in-waiting?  Maybe it was someone I shared my joke with?  Hmmmm.  Only time will tell.

For now, ArthurBranch2008.com and ArthurBranch.com are parked at GoDaddy.  And ArthurBranch08.com gets a “Server not found” message.  I am very curious where this one will go.