January 26, 2006

State of the State

How much is too much? At what point does the public just get tired of public corruption? Will too much corruption lead to anger or apathy?

Here in Tennessee, we are yet again one scandal closer to finding the answers to those questions.

Just as I got a press release yesterday regarding "Operation Crooked Highway," I received a press release from Phil Bredesen at almost the exact time. "Unfortunate timing," I thought to myself. Bredesen is running a nomination petition campaign for this year's gubernatorial election. In the press release, he his press secretary was touting the many several accompishments made over the past few years since Bredesen was first elected. Not once did it mention ethics.

With more and more negative news coming from state corruption, Phil Bredesen is vulnerable, but Republicans have still not been able to field a viable candidate.

I did, however, hear an interesting tidbit of information yesterday regarding a potential Republican candidate. While Jim Henry ruled out running for governor in November, he is supposedly coming to town to meet with several Republican lawmakers either this week or next. It was implied that they were going to try to talk him into running again.

If you'll remember, Henry ran against Van Hilleary during the Republican primary for Governor last time. Van Hilleary won the primary but eventually suffered a loss to Bredesen in the general election. Bredesen was once heard saying that he probably wouldn't have been governor if Henry had been the one to win the primary, and he's probably right. I guess you can thank Van Hilleary for that. He seems to have done a pretty good job at running a negative campaign against a fellow Republican, but when the rubber hit the road in the real election, he didn't have what it took to pull out a win.

That kind of makes me wonder if we're heading for deja vu in the Senate race. Look for that race to start getting negative very soon. I'll let you guess where it's going to originate from (see last paragraph).

Comments:

Please Note! Failure to abide by the following may result in your comments being edited or deleted: Remain on topic. Foul language and/or personal attacks are not permitted. Excessive links (more than three per thread) must be approved first. If you do include a link in your comment, make sure it is a short link (go to tinyurl.com if it is too long). Try to keep comments to 125 words or less. Thank you.

Sir,
It is obvious you are another poor Henry loser and just can not get over the idea that the "old" Republican moderates got beat by a bunch of younger, poorer conservative Republicans that raised enough money to beat you.
Personally, I like Henry and I think he would make a better governor than Bredesen. Poor losers like you is why we have a sorry, liberal democrat in office as Governor today, and is why the republican party is having trouble getting itself united to win in the future.
So get over it and be more forgiving as I will you for the untruthful comments you just made about Van Hilleary!!!!

Jim W. Horner

Posted by: Jim W. Horner at January 29, 2006 09:49 PM

Mr. Horner, which part of what Blake wrote is "untruthful?"

Posted by: Amy Learner at January 30, 2006 10:51 AM