The World According to Oatney

Ramsey Goes To England

Damian Thompson is right, of course, but for our purposes his quote is incidental to the larger reality that a Tennessee public figure has made the Telegraph two days in a row with less-than-flattering press. The Telegraph practices something akin to real journalism, which is absent in most of our newspapers in this country. In addition, their website has one of the best collections of bloggers on the internet, from the Mayor of London Boris Johnson, to Thompson quoted above, to former British Conservative Party Chairman Norman (now Lord) Tebitt, as well as the now-famous controversial Tory MEP Daniel Hannan. Telegraph economics bloggers are so influential that there are members of the Tennessee General Assembly who regularly check the newspaper's website.

The question for Ron Ramsey at this point is whether this kind of trans-Atlantic attention may help him going into Primary Day, as it might with a certain segment of voters, or whether it will backfire as having sullied Tennessee's international image. Did Ramsey harm that image, or is he simply guilty of telling us how he (and probably many voters in this State) really feels about the unease of a small but growing Muslim population when our country is at war with terrorists who happen to be radical Muslims.

Labels: Conservatism, Elections, Foreign policy, Republican Party, Tennessee politics

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 3:07 PM