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From Ken Marrero of Blue Collar Muse:
One
hopes this will put to rest, once and for all, idle and incorrect
speculation as to Corker’s position. Further, these things are not done
overnight. Clearly this has been in the works for weeks. Which means
that not only were Corker’s critics wrong on this but, while they were
boldly proclaiming their error, Corker was quietly and intentionally
working to protect America and Americans from UNSAT – just like he
always has.
NASHVILLE, May 17 - When conservative Tea Party activists helped Republicans extend their majority in Tennessee's legislature in 2010, they expected to get the legislation they wanted. (link)Ken Marrero of Blue Collar Muse and Lee Douglas of the 9-12 group and other people you may know are quoted in this article. Ken Marrero calls for a more moderate approach to advancing the conservative agenda as opposed to the scorched earth policy of the more extreme tea party conservatives.
I just now received this report from someone who attended the
convention of the Glen Hughes and Sharron Ford wing of the Republican
Party that goes by the name of Tennessee Republican Assembly. (Well, not
a wing of the party; more like a feather of the Party) This
communication is from someone who prefers to remain anonymous and was
speaking frankly. The characterizations in this communication are those
of the anonymous reporter and not mine. I was hesitant to post this
because I do not think it contributes to Party unity. However, Glen
Hughes calling everyone who does not march in lockstep with his views, a
RINO does not contribute to Party unity either.
There were about 200 "Paulistinians," who showed up just to vote for the Ron Paul. I estimate about 75 TRA, and an additional 50 who showed up to be seen (Marsha Blackburn included). Why are people like Tootie, Nathan James, Duane Dominy, and William Morgan lured to this type of meeting? Beats me. Overall, yawn. Speakers were boring and Angle has nothing of interest to add. No wonder Reid beat her like a drum. She was hawking her book, yawn again. The Paulistinians were the most interesting. If you think Glenn Beck is out there, then just talk to these folks. The Lunatic Fringe calls them the Lunatic Fringe.I used to belong to TRA and at some point just stopped paying my dues and attending meetings. I mainly stopped because I was, at the time, coordinating the Davidson County Republican Party "Egg and Bacon" summits which were weekly Saturday morning breakfast groups. At one time we had six of these groups and every Saturday of the month was taken attending these and TRA's meetings were also on Saturday mornings. I could not attend both.
This is an excellent analysis of the Wisconsin recall election from The Blue Collar Muse.
Last night’s recall votes in Wisconsin were both historic and profound. Historic in that Progressives redefined yet another political feature; the recall. Now it is a club with which to savage politicians for a vote you don’t like. Profound in its implications for the 2012 elections.
The record is clear in Wisconsin. For decades, public sector unions have enjoyed collective bargaining resulting, as always, in increased costs to taxpayers. The overall damage to Wisconsin was ignored until voters woke up and elected a Republican Governor who promised fiscal reform and specifically campaigned on these sorts of issues for years. Scott Walker was elected and Democrats lost.(link)
· require teacher pay be based on years of experience and level of education, not on performance· make it virtually impossible to dismiss teachers for poor performance and/or misconduct· require principals to give advance notice to teachers before visiting classrooms to evaluate performance· limit the number of conferences and other forums in which teachers meet with parents· give unions access to school mailboxes, bulletin boards, classrooms, and other facilities to use for their own purposes
Last night, seven of the 10 active candidates for the Republican nomination for the 5th Congressional District engaged in a debate at Apollo Middle School in Antioch. The debate was co-sponsored by Conservatives on the Move, The Tennessee ConserVOLiance, Tennessee Tax Revolt, the 9-12 Project Tennessee, the National Fiscal Conservative PAC, and the Davidson County Republican Party. Ken Marrero who blogs at Blue Collar Muse and is a conservative leader in Tennessee was the debate moderator. About 175 people attended the event.
Patrick Miranda and Tracy Tarum who had both missed the Davidson County Picnic were participants in this debate. Absent without an explanation was David Hall, who is running a campaign that must have as its campaign strategy avoiding places where active Republicans will hear your message. Hall missed this event and he also missed the picnic on Saturday. Also absent were Jarod Scott and Vijay Kumar.
The program moderator announced that Vijay had been in an auto accident and was in recovery and could not attend. Following my blog post on Saturday that mentioned Vijay’s absence from the July 10th DCRP picnic, Vijay called me and explained the same thing to me as his reason for missing that event. He said he had been rear-ended in an auto accident about two weeks before and had been in traction and would be out of commission for maybe two more weeks. Surprisingly, I saw Vijay at a meeting Monday night July 12 where there was presentation by a group called Americans for Peace & Tolerance. The meeting concerned the threat of radical Islam and was at the Hampton Inn on Crestmore Dr. I arrived late and left as soon as the event was over, and did not get a chance to speak to Vijay at that meeting. I am going to give Vijay the benefit of the doubt and assume he was too ill to attend the DCRP picnic, but recovered enough to attend the Monday event, but then had a relapse and was too ill to participate in the debate. I wish him a speedy recovery.
The debate was fast paced and enjoyable. A twist to this debate was that each candidate had a certain number of red flags they could throw to have the right of rebuttal of another speaker. Another twist was a Jeopardy-inspired use of white boards where all candidates answered the same question, writing their answer on the board and then revealing the answers at the same time. Ken did a great job moderating the debate.
Despite the enjoyable format and fast pace of the debate, it is still difficult to know who said what when seven people are debating. I recorded the event and took good notes, and may go back and quote some of the debate highlights. From memory however, here are debate highlights and observations.
Bob Ries spoke very loud into the microphone and was deafening. Bob also has a hearing impairment that kept him from adequately hearing the other contestants or the moderator.
Cece Heil and others, said they did not think it was an appropriate government function for FEMA to provide assistance during the recent Nashville flood. Bob Schwartz thought that was appropriate citing the Welfare clause of the constitution. Cece said Bob did not understand the welfare clause.
Bob Schwartz hammered Jeff Hartline on Jeff’s advocacy of an energy tax. Jeff explained that he was not advocating any additional amount of tax but that any additional tax revenue realized from any new additional sources of energy production be taxed at the same rate as current energy production and the revenue be used to reduce the deficit.
Lonnie Spivac advocated a procedural rule change in how congress conducts its business so that earmarks could not be tacked on to unrelated legislation. He credited Bob Ries for also advancing this idea.
Cece Heil said she opposed the Patriot Act but did support the use of harsh interrogation techniques.
Tracy Tarum was selected as the favorite of the candidates when asked who they would like to see win if they did not win the nomination.
On Saturday I attended the convention of the Tennessee Republican Assembly. TRA is part of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies, which calls itself, “The Republican Wing of the Republican Party.”
About fifty people were in attendance at the convention. We networked, and socialized and ate. We heard an address from State Representative Susan Lynn on the State Sovereignty movement. Bobbie Patray of Tennessee Eagle Forum was given an award and honored for her many years of service as a lobbyist with Eagle Forum. A panel consisting of several local activists talked about the future of the Republican Party in Tennessee and the conservative movement.
One of the speakers on the panel was Ken Marrano. Ken is a tireless local political activist. He has been an organizer of the local Tea party movement, he is the organizer of the statewide association of right-of-center bloggers called TennconserVOliance, and he had received national attention for his political organizing and was on the road as part of the national Tea Party Express.
Ken said something at the meeting which I thought was so very, very wise. He said that we conservatives could make a much greater impact on the direction of our country if we focused our attention locally. Looking at his website tonight, Blue Collar Muse, I saw where he addressed this same topic in a blog post. Please read his post. Here is an excerpt:
Let’s assume 1,000,000 people marched on Washington, DC last September spending 48-72 hours and $500 each to do so. Simple math reveals a pool of 48,000,000 to 72,000,000 man hours and a whopping $500,000,000 in cash. That’s enough to put 1 to 1.5 million man hours into phone banking, envelope stuffing, and door knocking to go along with $10,000,000.00 in giving to candidates in each state in the Union!I could not agree more. In my view, we conservatives squander a lot of our resource by focusing on Washington rather than the courthouse and the statehouse. I run into people all the time who have gone to one of the marches on Washington or to the CPAC convention or who send money to major causes funneled though large national organization. I also run into people who listen to the Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck on a regular bases and stay riled up but never put that emotion into action.
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