Posted on 09/01/2013 3:58:56 AM PDT by don-o
The tea party settled one question this afternoon at a meeting to audition candidates to challenge Sen. Lamar Alexander in next year’s GOP primary. Both Joe Carr and Kevin Kookogey promised they'll drop out of the picture if tea partiers are rallying behind the other guy.
Carr, a three-term state representative from Murfreesboro, took the pledge in his opening statement to the crowd of roughly 300 at the Sheraton Music City Hotel. It was the first of five meetings to vet potential challengers to Alexander and to conduct secret straw polls. At the end of September, tea partiers will add up the votes and decide which candidate to back. Carr said if it’s not him, he’s out.
We’re all here for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to beat Lamar Alexander for the United States Senate. Before I go any further, I’m going to tell you that this process is so important that we’ve got to unite around one candidate. However this process works out, I pledge to you that I will support that candidate because it’s that important. We as principled constitutional conservatives can no longer allow ourselves to be divided. We need one candidate who can run against Lamar who can win this election and carry the banner of constitutional conservatism to the United States Senate.
Kookogey, a former chairman of the Williamson County GOP, made a similar promise later in response to a question. Unlike Carr, who announced his candidacy this month, Kookogey hasn’t said whether he’ll run yet.
“The target is Lamar,” Kookogey said, adding that if he decides to run and “if Joe is polling ahead of me and he has more money, absolutely I would step aside and I would give him my money.”
This is bad news for Alexander, who hopes his opponents within the Republican Party will divide their votes in the primary. Splitting the conservative vote arguably is the only reason Bob Corker is a U.S. senator today. He won his primary in 2006 with fewer votes than the combined total of his two more conservative opponents. Bill Haslam did the same thing in his 2010 primary for governor.
Lamar! is already campaigning hard with ads on TV calling himself a “conservative.” Since when does a “conservative” vote over 60% of the time with liberal Democrats like Lamar does? I’m sick of these RINO liars. Corker did the same thing last election.
I think someone up there has been reading my posts.......
I have described such a process for winnowing out the tea party/conservative candidate......... It is in my mind, a “secondary” to select the candidate for the primary.
I take this a great news. In September yet. It gives Lamar plenty of time to develop a plausible reason to drop out.
Here in upper East Tennessee he ran an add flogging his great achievement....... a bill to allow fishing below dams.
What a joke, even if Rand Paul didendorse it.
I called it fiddling while Rome Burns. The fact he ran the ad this summer says to me he knows he is in trouble. He has been polling here also.
If the 7 conservatives running against Romney had simply gotten together in a room and had drawn straws to see which one of them would run and which would agree to drop out, then we could have had a Conservative candidate instead of Romney and quite possibly we could have had a Conservative president now.
My fear is that we are going to have 7 tea party conservatives all running against Christie and Christie will get the nomination by default. A lone liberal will always win over a half dozen conservatives.
This is very, very, very good news! It means people are putting aside any selfish lust for power for the people’s sake, to remove a scheming, treacherous man from power.
We’ll split the vote in South Carolina so that Lindsey will be forced into a one on one contest against a conservative. And we’ll unite behind one candidate in Tennessee so Lamar will be forced into a one on one contest against a conservative.
We’re learning. And those in power are trembling!
Proof that the Tea Party has grown up to a real power.
Ain’t that right Lamar? Woof. Good dog.
If the old guard want to continue thier boot licking, a## kissing and decieving the American people let them jump over to the rats they’re rats in the making and behind closed doors anyway. Besides what is worse than a rat you know is a rat, a rat that you presieve to be on your side
ronnie raygun has the right view of the Republican Party as it has existed from the beginning. The Republican Party is the original Progressive Party; Teddy Roosevelt was the first Progressive president.
Ronald Reagan was despised by the establishment Republicans for the same reasons that the Tea Party Republicans are despised today. Reagan and the Tea Party both stand for smaller less intrusive government. These are not the real traditional Republican platform philosophy.
Consider GW Bush, he was touted as a conservative and yet he gave us the largest expansion of the welfare state since Medicare namely his Medicare Prescription Drug Plan. Hardly a conservative idea.
It is we the Tea Party Conservatives that are the Republicans In Name Only.
We must remember that we are the Revolutionary movement in the Republican Party. We should not be surprised that we are the less than welcome new comers to the Party so to speak. As revolutionaries we must be dedicated to the cause and must be willing suffer great hardship for the cause.
The revolutionaries that gave us our country vowed to give “Our Lives, Our Fortune, Our Sacred Honor” to secure the blessings of liberty to their posterity. If we are to do the same we will have to be willing to pledge the same.
We must demand of those that are to carry our banner that the surrender all personal ambitions of power and glory to the cause of recovering the blessings of liberty that have been usurped by an out of control Federal government.
Spot on PM. But, if the scenario that is promised for Tenn plays out, perhaps we have a model for what actually works as we approach 2016
Then the real contest begins at the next level and deciding who to back as the races tighten. If Virgil Goode's name comes up again, I'm going to be sick at heart because it signals that we will never support anyone who has a chance to at least forestall the kind of evil that we allowed a second term. If we followed the same type strategy the Dims have been following, and take whatever small piece we can get away with, we might still recognize our country. Support the hell out of any upcoming Congress/Senate candidates that have any resemblance to Cruz, Lee and one or two others, and we might actually start to turn the tide while massaging the stage to eventually end up with some true Conservative Presidential candidates floating to the final ticket. Staying divided will drastically lessen the chance of such a scenario.
If conservative candidates would back down when it is apparent that they have no chance of winning maybe it would be easier. We should all remember how we got Mittens on the ballot, when he was a 30% candidate.
If Newt had dropped out of some of the primaries where he knew he had no chance what so ever of winning, it could have denied delegates to Mitt, and set up a two man race which Newt very likely would have pulled of the win.
Vanity is destructive. All the conservatives(?) in the race should have had a summit wherein they all agreed the goal was defeating Obozo, but they didn't.
It would be easier still if voters would stop throwing away their votes on candidates who have no chance of winning. It really comes down to the voters. They're the reason ol' Lamar has been a senator for so long.
Voters though they bare some responsibility, ask yourself what part the GOPe plays, when they have open primaries, allow Eastern States to decide for us whom we should have, and a host of rules changes they made at the last convention. In any three man race that does require an absolute majority, one of the candidates is likely to be supported covertly by the liberal in the race.
And THIS is why you are so disliked here.
You add NOTHING to the discussion, only snarky pokes
as if you are somehow more enlightened and therefore ‘better’ than anyone LEFT here in these United States WILLING to fight for a better future.
woof
“And THIS is why you are so disliked here.
You add NOTHING to the discussion, only snarky pokes
as if you are somehow more enlightened and therefore ‘better’ than anyone LEFT here in these United States WILLING to fight for a better future.”
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Well, it is obvious that I am hated by the dogs who do not have the imagination or ability to run their own lives, and despise those of us that do. That is the meaning of the phrase. I certainly do not belittle any of you. You live the lives that you have chosen, but you humiliate yourselves by castigating those of us that are happy with ours.
I am certainly not the only Expat American on here. I have communications with many, and many more asking for information on international living.
What I would like is for you and the rest of those that resent my traveling explain to me what YOU are doing to fix America, other then castigating those of us that live our own lives. I know the real answer. You are not doing squat, other then grousing at those of us that do LIVE our lives.
You are angry because you know there is nothing that you can do, short of starting another civil war. That is why I call you “dogs in a manger”, or maybe you prefer a USSA that is like the old USSR.
They denied citizens the right to leave, and shot those that tried. I know much about it, as I lived in formerly Communist central Europe before moving here.
I have seen the gun ramps where soldiers shot those that tried to swim the Danube over to Austria. Is that what you want?
My final word to you...Get a life, live it and love it.
You gave up and left years ago - we didn’t, so butt out. Go post on a Philippine Government website.
Nobody’s begrudging you the fact that you turned and ran; check the postings of other FReepers in the Phillipines - you’ll see that we leave them alone.
You, on the other hand, are essentially a back-seat driver; nobody likes them.
“You gave up and left years ago”
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I did not give up anything, other then an Obamination.
I know, you would be just like the old Soviet guard, shooting those that choose to enjoy their own lives.
Answer the question, Marcella...
What are YOU, and the rest of those that resent my traveling, doing to fix America, other then castigating those of us that live our own lives. I know the real answer. You are not doing squat, other then spewing vile complaints, simply because I have a life, and you don’t.. We each have only one vote.
Now, you go take care of your own misery, and leave us freedom lovers alone. If I were there to share you misery, it would do absolutely NOTHING to help you or the country.
We would both be sucking off the same teat.
This is my last post to you and your fellow dogs. I have a life to live. I suggest that you go find yours.
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