In Tennessee, at least:
On Election Night, voters spoke loudly with the echoes reverberating still today. In Tennessee, John McCain carried the state with 57% of the vote, Senator Lamar Alexander was re-elected with 65%, and fourteen new Republican legislators were elected yielding a Republican Majority in the General Assembly for the first time since 1868.
Voters elected legislators that carried the same values and principles that are held by average citizen in these districts. Those values and principles are pretty simple.
* Taxes and spending: The government should live within its means and oppose higher tax bills to fund a bloated budget; the voters know government needs to cut spending.
* Gun Rights: Voters want commonsense carry laws making it easier for them to protect themselves and their families.
* Local economies: Families in their community know that improvements are needed by investing in transportation and education infrastructure to support existing jobs and recruit new businesses. They are tired of the powerbrokers in Nashville increasing entitlement programs instead.
Candidates, who displayed the courage to challenge Democrat incumbents and in open seats were solid, qualified individuals. They were not just “known” in their communities. They are people that truly represent the values of their communities.
We believe this is what our founders intended with citizen legislators. The hard work and time commitment that is necessary to run campaigns are a good test of how hard each legislator will work for his or her district. The people of these districts will be well represented by their new representative’s principled leadership.
But it should be noted that Alexander out performed McCain by 8 percentage points – and had McCain jazzed up GOPers as much as he should have, we might have had a different result nationally.
The Tennessee GOP showed how its done – in an anti-GOP year with arguably the most unpopular GOPer ever in the White House, the Tennessee GOP clobbered the Tennessee Democrats. We have to get back to our roots, and back to the people – the left talks a great game about being for the people, but what they are really for is themselves…and for too long now, too many GOPers have aped this attitude, and now we’ve paid the price for it, and very deservedly.
It will be a long, hard road back to national power and it may even take a decade or two to complete (though I do think we have bright prospects for 2010), but it is a road we must travel for the sake of the nation. Liberalism, that dead dog of the past, will have its day – and it’ll be our job to ensure that it is the very last day liberalism ever has.
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