Zach Wamp: Extremist

Sean Braisted analyzes some recent missives from the gubernatorial candidacy of Zach Wamp and asks, is Zach Wamp offering Tennessee “a style of conservatism that alienates anyone in this state who doesn’t hate everyone who disagrees with them?” That would be a big 10-4, good buddy.

Somehow I’ve managed to get on all the major Republican e-mail lists, and so it goes that today Zach Wamps sends out email touting an upcoming fundraiser hosted by Nashville’s biggest douche-bag John Rich and the self-described “Redneck Woman” Gretchen Wilson. In addition, he is touting the pseudo-support of national rightwing blogger Erick Erickson of Red State:

Erick Erickson, the Editor-in-Chief of the nationally acclaimed conservative blog RedState, wrote an analysis of the Tennessee Governor’s race and said Zach “is a conservative and would govern conservatively.”

In his article, Erickson trashed popular Republican officials like Lamar Alexander and Howard Baker, saying:

For the longest time Tennessee has elected squishy moderates state wide. Howard Baker was conservative, but in a “compromise his mother to advance his goal” sort of way. Arguably Lamar Alexander is even worse, refusing to do anything that does not advance bipartisanship, even at the expense of core conservative goals. Hell, Alexander is not even and does not consider himself to be, a conservative.

Could you imagine a Tennessee Democrat so gleefully touting the endorsement of someone like Markos Moulitsas? Erickson has compared Linda Douglass to Joseph Goebbels and urged Conservatives to beat elected officials to a bloody pulp for regulating dish soap.

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It’s been a very telling day.

Nathan Moore, an English Only opponent and a “keen conservative legal mind”, digs up some pertinent info from Green Bay, Wisconsin, one of the bigger cities to have passed an English Only ordinance.

Councilman Eric Crafton, the English Only referendum sponsor, attempts to back out of a scheduled debate obligation because “If Karl Dean doesn’t have enough time to come,” he said. “I don’t see why I should.”

Sean Braisted, English Only opponent, calls Crafton on some of his New York Times-worthy anecdotal evidence (and makes an appropriate analogy).

Lady with a car, who is either for Crafton’s referendum or just really loves signage, almost runs over FOL* and Loews Vanderbilt Plaza Hotel Managing Director Tom Negri, while stealing an “Against/Against” lawn sign.

A day like this makes it even more apparent that the clearer heads in this English Only battle are those who are against the referendum.

*Friend of Liberadio(!)

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A Racist Orgy of Racially Offensive Racism

Nashville21.com’s Sean Braisted zeros in on the hypocrisy of the GOP’s most recent hollow cries of “sexism:”

So, if being dismissive of Sarah Palin’s accomplishments or “substance” is “sexist,” does that mean that being dismissive of Obama’s accomplishments is racist? If so, then the entire GOP convention was one racist orgy of racially offensive racism.

Excellent point. And while we’re thinking about racism. Let’s take in Tim Wise’s latest, which strains the last two weeks of election coverage through his white privilege filter:

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”


….

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.


White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.


White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.


Oh, there’s more…

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