Civil War In The Davidson County GOP
Posted on August 17, 2009 at 10:07 amIn a post on Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty site, Matt Collins, Vice-Chair of the Davidson County GOP, has taken the chairman of the County party, Kathleen Starnes to task for her recent request that Rep. Jim Cooper hold a townhall meeting on health reform. Cooper has refused.
In the post, Collins (and the 2nd Vice Chair David Davis) rebuke Starnes for taking unilateral action in releasing the open letter to the congressman and for representing her views as those of the party without meeting with other officers.
While our personal opinions are such that Representative Cooper’s refusal to hold a public town hall meeting is cowardice, the DCRP rules must still be upheld by its officers. Unilateral actions of this nature are unacceptable regardless of perceived historical precedent by previous Chairmen. In this instance it should be noted that Chairman Starnes’ actions are not reflective of the will of the Davidson County Republican Party.
This is a bold charge and one that Starnes has accused Collins himself of. The following a from an August 12th letter from Starnes:
DCRP Exec Board & Advisory Board
I have received some e-mails and phone calls from the Wamp and Haslam gubernatorial camps, and the State GOP, complaining about the remarks that Matt Collins made concerning these candidates following our July 11 picnic. I want to inform you that I have sent the attached letters to Rep. Wamp and Mayor Haslam to apologize.
Matt blogged his opinions concerning their positions on various issues and the assessment that they should “never hold an elected office again”, and it quickly spread via the internet. On at least one occasion that I am aware of, his comments appeared with the title as First Vice Chair of the DCRP and did not include a disclaimer that the opinion represented his own and not that of the party. This is precisely the type of situation we must guard against.
Please contact me if you would like to discuss this.
Kathleen Starnes
Starnes, of course, is referring to the controversy which erupted shortly after a party picnic where Collins neglected to shake the hand of Congressman Zach Wamp because of his vote in favor of a bailout.
It appears to be all out civil war today in Nashvillle GOP between the Old Guard and the Ron Paul Republicans who came within a stones throw of taking over the party apparatus earlier in the year.
Comments
8 Responses to “Civil War In The Davidson County GOP”
The difference is, at no point did I ever attempt to represent the DCRP, and in fact I have made it absolutely clear in every one of my opinion / blogs that my opinions were my own and not representative of the Pary.
Chairman Starnes was outside of the bylaws in this instance by purporting to represent the DCRP Executive Committee when in fact she did not.
I believe it is unfair to suggest that Mr. Collins refused to shake Congressman Wamp’s hand over “a bailout.” I may not have acted in the same manner, but it is an insult to the facts and Matt Collins to suggest that TARP was merely a bailout.
Unnecessary, pork-laden stimulus, to which we have become most accustomed, was not the cardinal sin of TARP. It was the unconstitutional powers accorded to the Secretary of Treasury, who is now, in effect, a CZAR.
And, just like the Democrat gubernatorial primary and the Special Olympics, no matter who wins everyone involved is still retarded. What is there, 1 elected Republican in all of Davidson County? Maybe 3 if you count the handful of boxes Williamson Countians Jack Johnson and Marsha Blackburn have in Brentioch. That’s pathetic. This group is totally dysfunctional and utterly pointless no matter who is calling the shots.
“What is there, 1 elected Republican in all of Davidson County?”
Well, the non-partisan system of local government obscures the real affiliations of politicians. But yeah, there aren’t many.
If the DCRP “leadership” continue to carp at each other, trying to protect their tiny fiefdoms, the Republicans never will get any traction in Davidson County - and that’s a real shame.
But Collins, you, by being an elected officer of the DCRP, essentially invited Wamp and Haslam, you were rude by refusing to shake his hand, and then, most importantly, by blogging about it, used his attendance at this event as a means to embarrass him. Whether you said it was your opinion is irrelevant. It was a sucker punch. And you put Starnes in a position of having to apologize on behalf of the organization you are an officer of.
Two high ranking, elected Republicans of Tennessee came to a county that has so few elected Republicans, and you acted in a manner that would most surely give them pause if they were asked by your organization to return. Now you wish to nit pick Starnes for criticizing a Democrat?
If you had been elected chairman of the DCRP, would your actions have been any different? Would you have invited them to your organization’s event and then badmouthed them via the media?
The letter Ms. Starnes wrote to Rep. Cooper was extremely well-worded and cordial. If any of you have not seen it, I urge you to find it and give it a read. I think it reflected very positively on the DCRP. The actions of Mr. Collins, on the other hand, have been designed to incite intra-party feuding. That helps no one.
I was already glad that Ms. Starnes won the DCRP chairmanship in the runoff atainst Mr. Collins, and their respective recent actions reinforce those thoughts. So long as Mr. Collins continues to do things such as making a scene at official DCRP events with Republican gubernatorial candidates, using his web site to defame and deface the DCRP and the gubernatorial candidates and criticizing Ms. Starnes when she made an excellent move, he will not have my support.
As you can probably tell, I agree with JohnnyC’s comments, too.
Read Matt’s “blogged opinions” and ask, why would not ALL Republicans agree?
“…one has to ask what is conservative about spending billions of nonexistent dollars, increasing the size/scope of the federal government, and voting against the US Constitution?”
Can you say, Republicrat?