Tennessee Republican Problem

Tennessee Republican legislators need to free themselves from a fear of the Republican governor’s system of rewards, punishments, and contract lobbyists.

Unseat Haslam?

I am wondering whether it is time to form a Republican or Tea Party group that aims to unseat Tennessee governor Haslam.  Maybe a group of Republicans who, if the party machine balks, will find a suitable Democrat to support in order to send a clear message to Nashville.

Tennessee Problems

With a majority in the state house and senate and a Republican governor in office, Republicans in Tennessee have been wasting their finite political capital and therefore face an increasingly narrow window of opportunity to make real progress in addressing the state’s many problems.  Let’s list a few:

• A labor vacuum created by the socialist welfare state that makes it more comfortable for those best suited for low-skilled work to stay in their taxpayer subsidized homes than to do productive, paid work
• Unsustainable influx and residual population of illegal immigrants that flows over our borders to fill the aforesaid labor vacuum
• A reliance upon the Federal teat that shows itself in the eagerness with which Haslam sought the spigot for Race to the Top education dole

Governor’s Agenda Hits “Sitting Targets”

Instead of tackling any one of the difficult tasks that a responsible and trustworthy elected official would apprehend a moral obligation to confront, it appears that Mr. Haslam wishes to “accomplish” only a couple of “easy” things in his first, and hopefully only term.   He seems unwilling, or perhaps feels he is unequal to the task of accomplishing meaningful work that would entail encountering strong opposition by well-funded and extremely vocal entrenched interest groups.

One emailed communication I’ve read declares that Haslam has instead gone after both teachers and state employees, “sitting targets,” which came as a surprise to the writer, because neither related “issue” was talked about during the campaign.  Teachers and state employees are, largely, compliant groups of hard-working, dedicated individuals whose remuneration is low in comparison to their effort.  Legislative attempts to remove what little protection they have in what is already a “right to work” state amounts to little more than tormenting a captive population.