So Why Did Mae Beavers Do It?
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 6:22 pmEd Cromer gives the reasons why Sen. Mae Beavers decided to run for re-election to the state Senate and Tom Humphrey puts them in order.
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Tea Partiers Not Like The Perotista Of The 90s?
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 6:20 pmThat’s what folks over at the National Review are saying:
Republican strategists think of the tea partiers as this era’s analogue of Ross Perot’s followers in the early 1990s. But the Perot voters were secular, socially liberal, and concerned above all with the single issue of the deficit. It was largely in order to court them that Republicans kept social issues out of the Contract with America.
Most tea-party sympathizers, on the other hand, are pro-life. They are more pro-life than the electorate as a whole, although less so than Republicans. Their religious practices are roughly in line with those of the electorate. Tea-party participants, meanwhile, are both more pro-life and more frequent churchgoers than the electorate. Social issues may not be what binds the tea partiers together or what matters most to them, but social issues are not going to drive a wedge between them and Republicans.
Tea-party supporters are concerned about the deficit, but not to the exclusion of other issues. They don’t want to cut the defense budget. A small, 52 percent majority of them believes we “should cut taxes to stimulate growth” while only 37 percent say that the deficit makes tax cuts unaffordable (and a tiny 7 percent want tax increases to reduce the deficit).
The tea partiers are often said to be populists hostile to Wall Street and big business. But while they clearly oppose bailouts of financial firms, their antipathy may not go much farther than that.
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How Do You Define A ‘Family-Friendly’ Celebrity?
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 6:14 pmKatherine Miller says it’s complicated.
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The Mayhill Fowler Story
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 6:10 pmThe Tennessee native tells the LA Times that new meida stardom isn’t all puppy dogs and ice cream:
Fowler uncovered Barack Obama’s biggest stumble in campaign 2008, turning her into a star. She was pursued as a new-media seer, jetting off to journalism conferences and sending her digital tape recorder for exhibit at the Newseum in Washington D.C.
Yet many mainstream journalists disdained her as a poseur. Her former editors, after the campaign ended, unfriended her on Facebook and moved on. Nobody is much interested now in paying her to pursue her new craft.
But Fowler still tells me: “I fell in love with journalism. I feel like I’m not alive if I’m not doing it.”
The homemaker and unpublished novelist who rocked a presidential campaign — revealing what candidate Obama thought about poor, “bitter” voters — could be the poster child for citizen journalism.
Except citizen journalism — a crazy quilt of disruptive technologies and emerging voices — defies poster children. Just because you took one star turn doesn’t earn you a place on the marquee.
Fowler, 63, has just published a book about her 2008 campaign odyssey. “Notes From a Clueless Journalist: Media, Bias and the Great Election of 2008″ is as quirky as Fowler’s rambling posts for OffTheBus, the Web operation that got novices to write campaign dispatches that were posted on the Huffington Post.
Kicking It Off Right
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 4:53 pmThe Tennessee Journal reports that Diane Black raised more than $100,000 last night at a $500-a-couple event in Gallatin.
Just Wait’ll We Get Our Crazy Right
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 4:51 pmTracy Moore says Nashville’s only the 32nd “craziest” city in the country.
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Making Them Feel The Fear
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 4:49 pmFrom TPM:
Senate Republicans are running out of options. As Democrats inch closer to passing health care reform, the GOPers in the upper chamber have realized they can’t rely on the procedural tricks they have at their disposal in the Senate to stall or derail the process because all of the action is in the House.
So their latest plan to derail the reform legislation is more devious: Senate Republicans have embarked on a rhetorical scorched-Earth strategy about the political perils of passing health care, to sow the seeds of doubts in the minds of House Democrats in the hopes that they lose their nerve and sink the bill.
Call it Congressional psy-ops.
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Cromer: Beavers Victory Over Lynn ‘Not A Forgone Conclusion’
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Veteran statehouse reporter Ed Cromer busts some analysis in the Tennessee Journal on what could be the race of the summer:
Lynn may decide to run for reelection rather than risk a loss to Beavers. If she stays in the Senate race, Beavers will be favored, but Lynn’s defeat won’t be a forgone conclusion.
She is popular in her House district, which the Senate district encompasses, and has no particular negatives in the rest of the Senate district.
Beavers is popular, but she’s also made some enemies, and her flip-flop on running won’t help her.
The GOP primary may get nasty, but the seat is unlikely to go Democratic.
Glad To Be A Tennessean?
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 4:04 pmFrom USA Today:
Residents eager to get their state tax refunds may have a long wait this year: The recession has tied up cash and caused officials in half a dozen states to consider freezing refunds, in one case for as long as five months.
States from New York to Hawaii that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn say they have either delayed refunds or are considering doing so because of budget shortfalls.
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Getting Confused At The County Clerk
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 4:02 pmBetsy Phillips tells a true story.
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Second Nobel For Al Gore
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 3:01 pmHe did invent it, didn’t he?
Probably Not The Same Instincts As Were On Display Yesterday
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 3:00 pmState Sen. Mae Beavers says her “mom” instincts lead her to champion ignition interlock for drunk drivers:
One man, woman or child is killed every 30 minutes in the U.S. due to drunken drivers. In fact, Tennessee was ranked by Forbes magazine last year as the 11th-worst state for DUI fatalities. And if you think you or a family member is not at risk, it is estimated that three out of every 10 Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related traffic crash at some point in their lives.
With these statistics in mind, I have filed a bill for the past three years that incorporates a device that statistics show can be the No. 1 source of protection from drunken drivers: ignition interlock. An alcohol ignition interlock is a small and sophisticated device with a breathalyzer tube that prevents a vehicle from being started until the driver blows into it and has no alcohol in his or her system. Currently, ignition interlocks are required for repeat offenders, those who have statistically driven drunk hundreds of times before they are ever caught.
My bill SB 2965 would require interlock devices to be installed for a year in cases of aggravated first offenders (those who blow a 0.15 percent blood-alcohol content, which is almost twice the legal limit), people driving with children in the car, or those involved in accidents caused by alcohol impairment.
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Marsha Blackburn Declared Victory Over Wasteful Spending Yesterday
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 2:55 pmTruman Bean has the boastful, exaggerated presser.
Pagan King A Tea Partier
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 2:47 pmThe diversity of the tea party movement.
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Study Says Immigration Reform Could Be Good For ‘The Economy’
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 2:47 pmFrom the WI:
One study shows that comprehensive immigration reform could add $1.5 trillion to the country’s GDP over the next 10 years by increasing consumption and investment. Comprehensive immigration reform, here, is defined as a plan that “creates a pathway to legal status for unauthorized immigrants in the United States and establishes flexible limits on permanent and temporary immigration that respond to changes in U.S. labor demand in the future.” According to this Center for American Progress and Immigration Policy Center study, comprehensive reform would also boost wages for both native-born and newly legalized immigrant workers.
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Senator Henry Reads To Children
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 2:44 pmPhotos at Dru Fuller’s house.
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Political Journalists On 2008 At Vandy
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 2:42 pmDan Balz and Haynes Johnson, two of the nation’s most experienced political reporters, will engage in an evening of political discussion April 1 at the John Seigenthaler Center at Vanderbilt University. The 5:30 p.m. event will be followed by a reception and book-signing.
Balz and Johnson, co-authors of the acclaimed book The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election, will discuss the election of President Barack Obama and its impact on this year’s election campaigns for the control of Congress.
The program is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and the First Amendment Center.
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New Study
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 2:03 pmTraditionalists and conservatives are big failures.
Independents — And What They Used To Be
Posted on March 12, 2010 at 1:54 pmAccording to the poll, a majority of independents - six in 10 — say they used to identify with one of the nation’s two major political parties. Fourteen percent of independents were once Republicans, 23 percent are former Democrats, and another 24 percent say they actually belonged to each of the major political parties at one time or another.
The poll did not ask when these current independents changed allegiances.
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