Say this about the Shelby County GOP: Demographic shifts in recent years have made it difficult to impossible for local Republicans to win a countywide race.
But they sure can turn out in impressive numbers for their annual Lincoln Day banquet, the most recent installment of which was held Sunday at the East Memphis Hilton on Ridge Lake Boulevard.
The keynoter this year was Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, who, after being introduced to the crowd by 8th District Congressman David Kustoff, said she intended to have “a family discussion” with them.
“If you know anything about me, you probably know that I’m a farmer and rancher who has run businesses my whole life,” she said, and, indeed, an introductory video had included some interesting rustic images of her, notably one of her galloping aboard a high-spirited horse across the Dakota plains.
Actually, she is best known — both locally and everywhere else — as having quite recently been a likely, maybe even probable, choice of Donald Trump to be his vice presidential running mate in the forthcoming election.
But that was before news leaks of the content in her just-published memoir, No Going Back, which contained, among other things, her account of having shot to death — executed, as shocked critics, not all of them Democrats, would allege — a young hunting dog that, for various reasons, she had become dissatisfied with.
And the deed was done at a gravel pit. Not the best family-style imagery to boost her veep chances, even for the hyper-aggressive Trump. So, even though Noem’s notoriety made her a good draw for this year’s banquet, there was no going back for her vice-presidential boom.
The MAGA-minded Noem’s own accounting for her choice of book title was to forswear any going back to “the Mitt Romneys and the Cheneys and the Bushes” and their purportedly go-along-to-get-along ways.
Recalling a once-famous phrase of the late GOP icon Barry Goldwater, moderation in the pursuit of Republican goals was treated as anything but a virtue Sunday night. State Republican chairman Scott Golden riled the crowd up with his assertion that no fewer than “103 liberal, Communist left-wing groups” had registered to protest at this summer’s forthcoming GOP convention.
And there was a culminating speech from state Senator Brent Taylor, whose persona and nonstop crusade to oust Democratic District Attorney Steve Mulroy are both ubiquitous phenomena these days.
Taylor, who was presented with an award Sunday night for his “outstanding public service” and, with his significant financial support of the gala, was designated as the event’s “title sponsor,” did his best to make his anti-Mulroy vendetta a predominant theme of the evening.
Last week, as the senator reminded his audience, he had sworn to introduce legislation next year to remove Mulroy from office via two-thirds votes in both chambers of the legislature.
With an assist from Golden, who had characterized Mulroy as a “Soros-minded” DA — meaning a tool of philanthropist-mega-activist George Soros, an international bogeyman for conservatives — Taylor invited the crowd to share his enthusiasm for a purge of Mulroy. The DA was savaged for sins ranging from alleged softness in bail policy to an abortive proposal to offer a diversion program to previous nonviolent offenders apprehended for illegal possession of firearms.
“Make no mistake!” thundered Taylor. “Our community is less safe” because of the DA with his “restorative justice system.” He called for “maintaining the Memphis middle class by making Mulroy meaningless.”
Since the dinner, Taylor has upped the ante, establishing a “hotline” to receive input from crime victims, current or former staff members, or “anyone with information relative to the ouster resolution.”
Meanwhile, after the fire and brimstone of the Lincoln Day gala, attendees have the opportunity, for better or for worse , to enjoy some quiet reading time. Each person present received a copy of Governor Noem’s book, which is subtitled “The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.”
