Roy Exum
A guy who I admire and respect wrote me yesterday. He had just read my story defending Bob Corker for honoring “The Code” due to his true friendship with Phil Bredesen. He is also no stranger to my vivid dislike of the Republican choice to replace Corker in the Senate. Marsha Blackburn is no match against Bredesen on any tier and it is clearly the Republican Party itself that has forced such a lousy choice on Tennesseans.
So yesterday I received a raft of emails like this one: “President Trump has the economy moving and things are looking up. Times are far too perilous for this President to give the radical Democratic Party the Senate since we both know what that would mean. As much as you and I dislike Blackburn, we cannot afford to send Bredesen to the Senate, much less another 75-year-old since the Senate seems to be already full of them.
“Who do you think Bredesen will vote with on issues that matter? Do you actually believe a new Senator who happens to be a Democrat will vote for what’s best for us or his Party? What will happen when the bloodthirsty left brings Articles of Impeachment? As much as I like horses and all animals for that matter, just maybe you are missing the forest for the trees …”
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First, we need to get this out in the open right now. I have voted Republican all of my life. In our first election of the year on Monday, I will vote a straight Republican ticket (Note: I cannot vote for Democrats Greg Beck or Warren Mackey because I do not live in their districts … but I sure would.)
I truly believe the Republican Party in Tennessee is ruining our state. Our local Congressman is Chuck “Do Nothing” Fleishmann and next door we’ve got the other worst guy in Congress, Scott DesJarlais. If you don’t think those two are a total embarrassment to our region then you fail to understand why our state Republicans continue to deeply undermine all that’s good and right for the voters of southern Tennessee. Lord have mercy – how we long and clamor for a “doer of deeds.”
It’s a mess – it is all about money and faux-loyalty to “The Party.” So where are we right now? We’ve had a Republican majority in the Senate for the past six years and about 90 percent of sane America is so incensed I believe that Washington D.C. could easily qualify as a mental asylum. Get a piece of paper and write down the wonderful things that our Republicans have done. Just try it.
As you marvel at such a short list, then write down each elected official in Washington from Tennessee and grade them A-to-F. Are you kidding me! Go ahead … if you are truthful over half the class will bounce outa’ school! No one holds the Republican Party accountable for the dopes it attracts and you know that’s the honest truth.
Now, go back to the above letter and re-read one sentence: “As much as you and I dislike Blackburn, we cannot afford to send Bredesen to the Senate … “
Oh, pray tell -- why not? In the past six years, our Republican leaders in Washington haven’t given a yellow dog’s bark about us. It is so obvious and glaring that Washington’s negligence is “newsworthy” week after week. Let’s get somebody up there who cares about Tennessee instead of ‘Big Pharma’ Blackburn. The real reason there is such a thin edge between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate is because no one in the Republican Party dares hold any other accountable
I am so sick and tired of hearing gloom-and-doom if we don’t have a Republican majority but – get this – I am much more irked that the Republican Party sorts through the whole of the entire United States and then comes up with the sorriest collection of louts that ever sullied the true intent of public service. They are led by possibly the very worst – Mitch McConnell, the 76-year-old geezer who, after 33 years in the Senate, outlived his shelf-life very long ago.
The Republicans in Washington are dysfunctional. They spend all their time, day after day, feuding with the other side of the aisle when men of character and purpose would be building bridges instead as they did in years long past. Hem, haw, kick gravel but everybody in America knows that’s the truth. Look at the members of Congress who are throwing up their hands and leaving. South Carolina’s Trey Gowdy is fabulous but he’s done, over, through. No mas! Why?? Because he wants to enjoy his life.
A big reason the Republican Party has become so bad is because the Democrats, for all practical purposes, cease to exist. Between the Obama administration, a deluge of certifiable wackos, and a literal avalanche of snowflakes the Democrats have virtually no viable candidates in any election. Point to any given one, outside of Bredesen, and I’ll show you a loser. Shouldn’t somebody respond and correct that? The truth is the Dems are real low on “somebodys” and the party proper could care less.
Face it. If you will study the Democratic roster in any mid-term election in the Deep South, there are no worthy candidates to answer the admittedly flummoxed Republicans in any state. The Democrats stand for nothing and it shows worse than a girl’s slip at the prom. Scandalous? No. But tawdry? You betcha.
If the Democrats would offer solid, sound, and rational candidates that weren’t hog-tied to some radical game plan, they could make the GOP pay dearly but the Dems’ handlers have no more of an idea of what is going on because their questions, responses, and senseless itinerary – get this right – have left out those who have no other place to go. Look hard at what has happened to blacks – the Democrats have not done what is right but African-Americans have nowhere else to go.
Despite all of this, Bredesen brings a proven record and an appeal to Republicans who are ashamed that Blackburn is the best the GOP can offer. He was admirable in both terms as a governor and – get this right – he did what was best for the people in Tennessee. I could care less if he is Cuban, a Mason, a former Green Bay Packer … all I care about is who will be best for Tennessee. And it sure ain’t Marsha Blackburn or the now-sullied Republican Party of Tennessee.
Scott Golden, the state chairman who actually was Blackburn’s employee, disqualified seven of Marsha’s opponents in the primary because they didn’t meet some idiotic newly-revised qualifications in this the land of the free.
Let’s get this straight. Anybody who reads what I write knows full and well I am not a Democrat by any stripe. They also know that I stand up for horses who can’t defend themselves, people who struggle, my Christian faith and all else that I hold dear. But if you dare think I’m going to do what is best for the insipid Republican Party versus what is best for the fine people of Tennessee, you are totally equipped to become a member of Congress your own self.
royexum@aol.com