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GOP-on-GOP vitriol
Posted By katie allison granju
Internal strife within the Knox County GOP ranks hits the local blogsophere:
So Brian Hornback lets loose with the poison that he normally saves for private conversations. He calls me a liar, but doesn’t say what I am lying about. He calls me a lawyer, as if that is going to hurt my feelings. He says that I support either Clinton or Obama, but he can’t point to anywhere that I have endorsed either of the Democratic candidates. He says something about Tyler Harber, but I have no clue what the heck he is talking about. He comments on Randy Neal’s site that I’m not “from around here,” as if being tied with Knox County politics somehow makes one wiser to the ways of the world.
Brian’s right - I’m not from around here. And I’m damn proud of it. I’m from the 1st District of the Great State of Tennessee, where people support candidates that believe what they believe. We sat with Jimmy Quillen and Bill Jenkins at church socials and pancake breakfasts, talking about what we could do to make this world a better place through the vehicles of limited government, lower taxes, religious and civil liberties, protection of the right to bear arms, and a strong military to defend our borders.
The bond we felt has to do with belief and ideology, not party loyalty. This is more of an Appalachian trait, it seems, than a Tennessean one or a Southern one. I suppose that one could expand voting for a common ideology instead of with party affiliation to many parts of the South, and Zell Miller of Georgia would be an example of this phenomenon. In fact, those Republicans who cheered Zell’s loyalty to his ideology at the expense of his party and then deride those of us who do the same thing as the party of McCain drifts Left are nothing more than hypocrites and opportunists.
I am not supporting John McCain. I will not vote for John McCain. I have not been shy about those statements. If given the choice of candidates who have not supported tax cuts, a limited government, the right to bear arms, closing our borders to the flow of criminals crossing them, and only serve to feed their own insatiable thirst for power, I will vote for none of them. I had hoped to vote for the Constitution Party’s Alan Keyes (who I previously worked for in my second presidential campaign), but he recently lost his bid to be placed on the ballot to Chuck Baldwin.
If I were to vote today, I would vote for Chuck Baldwin. Unlike many of his predecessors, he is getting some genuine press, as demonstrated here in this piece in WorldNetDaily. And no one should be surprised, as I said that I might support the Constitution Party nominee over a year ago. (Also, check out Baldwin’s speech linked to in the April, 2007 post.)
And this is the difference between Brian Hornback and myself. As I have said many times on this blog and off, Brian Hornback was perfect for being Chairman of the Knox County GOP. That job is all about being for the party - even when the party is flat-out wrong.
Apr 30th, 2008
