Labels: Conservatism, Elections, Foreign policy, Humor, Miscellany
posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 10:38 PM
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For the candidates who were running for office on the May ballot, however, I fear the event didn't amount to the kind of exposure they might like. In the 2 1/2 hours I was at the candidate fair, I believe I saw about ten members of the public who were not affiliated with the Chamber of Commerce or part of the campaign help or family of other candidates. Many of the candidates (myself and my opponent included) were strolling the room circulating ourselves among the other candidates and their supporters. I talked to a lot of the members of Building a Better Future and the Chamber of Commerce-who it should be pointed out did an excellent job with the organizational details of the event-but spoke with few members of the public who had come out just for the sake of visiting with different people on the ballot.
Labels: Elections, Local politics
posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 5:08 PM
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So Common Cause doesn't like what they now deem to be the "codifying" of the "political firing of election administrators." I might be inclined to place some stock in Common Cause's argument if Common Cause had raised such a fuss about partisan discrimination when the Democratic administrators they are presently advocating for were originally hired by Democratic-controlled county election commissions, made so in the days when the Democrats were the majority party.
Labels: Democrats, Elections, Republican Party, Tennessee politics
posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 11:39 PM
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Tennesseans have a recent history of electing and then re-electing popular Governors who then quite literally stick it to the electorate when they are lame ducks in their second terms. Ned McWherter did it, and left office replaced by a popular and supposedly conservative Republican, Don Sundquist. Sundquist really pushed for an income tax in his second term, and it was during Sundquist's administration that Tennessee has come the closest in modern times to enacting an income tax.
Now Phil Bredesen wants to enact a total tax increas of over $85 million, but he doesn't have to answer for it in November. It seems that he is following a bipartisan historical pattern.
Labels: Conservatism, Democrats, Republican Party, Tennessee politics
posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 2:10 PM
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Let us be honest and straightforward about what the Governor is proposing. He may disguise this manuver all he likes, but lifting the sales tax cap is in fact a tax hike. The Governor wants the sales tax cap to be lifted so that he will not only be able to avoid giving State employees a pay cut, but will be able to continue those employees' regular bonuses. Meanwhile, many Tennessee small businesses are struggling to stay afloat. The proposed tax increase would impair their ability to purchase equipment-some family businesses might even have to choose between buying necessities and hiring employees.
The real problem with the Governor's tax increase proposal is that he is proposing to raise taxes and avoid a five percent pay cut for State employees. As I said in a previous column about this matter, no one wants to tell your employees you need to cut their pay. The reality which the State must acknowledge is that the majority of Tennesseans don't work for the State, and many private sector Tennesseans trying to scrape by in this depression have seen their hours or their pay cut (or both). Some have lost the benefit of paid holidays-something many took for granted in recent times-while others have lost some or all of their regular paid vacation.
Labels: Conservatism, Democrats, Elections, Republican Party, Tennessee politics
posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 2:47 PM
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I suspect that Mike Clark knows the political truth, and that is that Phil Roe won the Republican Primary (and thus the election) in 2008 because he was not David Davis. In 2006, Davis won in a crowded 13-way Republican Primary by 500 votes. Not everyone running against Davis that year could be classified as a true "moderate," and I would argue that most of them were not-but few of them cared much for David Davis, and all knew that Davis was beatable if the personal opposition to him united behind a single candidate-Phil Roe was that candidate. The great irony is that Phil Roe defeated David Davis in the 2008 Republican Primary by a virtually identical margin to Davis' 2006 win in a much more crowded field.
None of that is to say that Democrats who do live here don't deserve to nominate a candidate and to have someone to vote for, but even when they put forth their best effort, the futility of that effort does tend to show from time to time. The Democrats brought forth Rob Russell in 2008, and Russell clearly campaigned hard. He moved around the district, went door to door, and he had campaign help on the ground. Russell's signs were certainly all over my part of the district in eastern Jefferson County and Hamblen County, and to see that many signs for a known Democrat in any part of Jefferson County-in or out of the First District-is almost unheard of (it is more common in Hamblen County, where there are more people who identify as Democrats). Yet, at the end of the day Russell's hardest work was not enough to make a dent in the Republicans elephant-sized majority in the First District. Mike Clark's supposition that the race in the First District isn't all about money does have some truth to it, however...
Both Clark and Rob Russell (who is acting as Mike Clark's campaign treasurer) have the same problem: As Custer was up against too many Indians, they face too many Republicans.
Labels: Congress, Democrats, Republican Party, Tennessee politics
posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 3:36 PM
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Labels: Faith, Holy Mother Church
posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 8:53 PM
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