Tag: Republicans

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Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: Pulling the Plug (Again!)

I said, some months ago (“Time To Pull the Plug,” December,
’06), that it was time for Congress to defund the war in Iraq. It has now become
apparent that’s the only way we’re going to get out of Iraq in anything
approaching a reasonable period of time In the time since I wrote that piece,
hundreds more American soldiers have died, thousands more have been permanently
disabled, and we’ve spent additional billions of dollars on this tragic, futile
war. The electorate spoke loudly and clearly last November about their antipathy
for the war. Their mistake was thinking their vote would bring an end to the
war, just as the Iraqis’ mistake was thinking that voting for a government would
actually give them a government.

The feckless Democrats have knuckled under to a Republican
autocrat, choosing to play a dangerous game of political chicken with Bush
instead of exercising their electoral prerogative. If Bush thought he was given
“political capital,” after a close election victory in ’04, Democrats were given
the bank in ’06. Yet, they’ve cowered in their corners, afraid of the political
consequences of doing what they were elected to do. What sense does that make?

And the Democrats’ excuse? We don’t have enough votes to
override a veto, they say, while they engage in pathetic maneuvering, posturing,
and worse, empty table-thumping. The only thing the Democrats can do to end the
war is the very thing they have the power to do, without worrying about whether
or not the President likes or approves of it—cut off funding. Congress has
what is so colorfully called the “power of the purse.” Under the Constitution,
Congress decides whether, and how much, to fund wars. It has the power, under
the terms of Article I, Section 8, to “raise and support armies.”

Many people may not realize that, thinking that anything
Congress does is subject to Presidential approval (through signing) or
disapproval (through veto). But the truth is, Congress can end this war, ALL BY
ITSELF. So why hasn’t it done so? Because it has bought into the spin of an
administration that enjoys one of the lowest approval ratings in history that
cutting off funding for the war is cutting off funding for the troops (even
though that is manifestly untrue). And if Congress did that they’d probably face
the folks who drive around in cars with those magnetic “Support the Troops”
stickers rising up in revolt, right? Wrong.

The Democrats have allowed Bush (and his various henchmen)
to define funding for the war as either being for “spreading democracy,”
“fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”, or being
against the troops. With the notable exception of Congressmen Martha and
Kucinich, and of late, Chris Dodd, the Democrats have allowed themselves to be
cowed by an administration whose “support” for the troops has manifested itself
in vehicles that don’t protect troops from being blown up, involuntarily
extended tours of duty and woefully inadequate health care when they leave the
military. So who’s really supporting the troops?

In addition to the “not supporting our troops” trope, the
Republicans also have their go-to talking point, namely that if troops are
withdrawn, the result will be a catastrophe. This from the same people who
claimed there were WMD’s in Iraq, that the war would be short (and cheap), that
we’d be greeted as “liberators,” and that Iraqi oil would pay for the war. In
other words, Bush and his cadre of neocon war drummers were wrong about every
single thing they predicted about the war. But now we’re supposed to believe
their prediction about what will happen when we withdraw? That defies logic.

The President’s speech on Thursday, which followed his
alter ego, General Petraeus’ dog and pony show before Congress (which revealed
that he himself can’t say that the war in Iraq is making the U.S. any safer),
revealed, at long last, his (Bush’s) true agenda. We all know that the U.S. is
building the largest embassy in the history of civilization in Iraq, and that
it’s been building permanent military bases in Iraq, so we knew Bush et al. were
planning on a long-term presence in that country. But now we know that he’s
planning on an indefinite presence, because he has finally told us so. The
“enduring relationship” he announced during his speech has been interpreted as
nothing short of the kind of commitment we’ve seen in Korea.

In other words, American troops will be stationed in Iraq
for at least the next 50 years (which is probably how long it would take to get
the Iraqi army to “stand up” anyway). Of course, Korea isn’t in the midst of a
civil war, and few, if any, American soldiers who have been stationed there for
the last 50 years have died as a result of any combat. So, in the face of
overwhelming opposition to the war, the public’s belief that American troops
should be promptly (within a year) and totally withdrawn, and an approval rating
lower than most used car salesmen have, what does the President do? Why, of
course, he calls for our troops to be permanently stationed in Iraq.

I’ve thought, for some time, that Bush has gone “Captain
Queeg” (the deranged commander of a battleship in the novel—and a role so
convincingly played by Humphrey Bogart in the movie of the same name—The Caine
Mutiny) on us, or worse, that he’s figured out how to hold us all hostage to his
insanity, while we (and especially the Democratic party) have been suffering
from a bad case of Stockholm syndrome. The sailors on the U.S.S. Caine mutinied
in order to prevent the ship from capsizing. Our ship is severely listing,
thanks to our “Captain Queeg’s” insanity. If we don’t take over control of this
ship soon, and convince the Democrats in Congress that the only way to do that
is to stop funding for the war, we may find our ship of state capsizing as well.

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Politics Politics Feature

MAD AS HELL: Ye Olde GOP Presidential Players

The hallmark of this president will undoubtably be the
Iraq war; however the influence of Karl Rove with his powerful Svengali job as
casting agent and director for the George W. Bush Show will loom large. Over
the last six years, America has been a willing participant in a reality show
created by Republicans called Let’s Pretend. Thematically, this is the
message: “I will pretend to tell you the truth, if you will pretend to believe
it.”

When it comes to acting, Dubya is a rookie, but you’ve
got to hand it to him —- the guy is one hell of a performer. After all, it
can’t be easy playing Goober Pyle, Howdy Doody, and Forrest Gump
simultaneously. Until now, the sunny performances by Ronald Reagan on the show
I’m Not a President but I Play One on TV have ranked tops among
Republicans, but the acting skills of George the Forty-Third have put old
Ronnie to shame.

Cheney, Condi, and Rummy, the co-producers of this
mendacious melange, have a flair for the dramatic as well. Their formula has
been brilliant: Take Lost in Space, cross it with some Green Acres,
and lace it with just the right amounts of Combat and Rawhide
to create a new version of Groundhog Day. What a masterful stroke of genius it
was to make the media part of the cast. When it came to the thespian talents
of the working stiffs at the networks and 24 -hour cable channels, who knew?

Stage doors will soon be shutting for our Witless Wonder
but those amusement loving Republicans have nothing to fear – Fred Thompson is
waiting in the wings. Thompson, a bona fide B- lister in Hollywood rolled out
his candidacy this week by keeping all the razzle-dazzle so cherished by his
party. Not one to disappoint, Ready Freddy kicked off his campaign on The
Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

The role of Candidate is a reprise of one of Thompson’s
earlier portrayals, but in case you missed it, this is the synopsis: Southern
Lawyer turned Washington Senator/actor/lobbyist drawls his way through America
using warmed-over Reagan anecdotes to tout Dixie-fried conservative values.
Folksy speeches that don’t really say anything but are punctuated with the
benefits of war, a devotion to God, and the love of freedom stir the crowds of
the saved and self-righteous. Winking and smiling, Thompson is assuring
nervous neo-cons that he’s their man and will continue on with the Bush
charade of pretending to tell us the truth, so we can continue to pretend to
believe it.

With rank hypocrisy, Republicans love to condemn the
mythical Hollywood life style and claim it to be the epitome of hedonism
represented only by Democrats. Yet Republicans are the ones with a penchant
for electing real actors — candidates whose multiple marriages, secret
lovers, and closeted sexcapades more accurately reflect Hollywood values. In
the days ahead, it will be interesting to see if Mr. Law-‘n-Order can cast his
actor’s spell over Republican voters.

On the other hand: Surely, the time has come for people
to consider electing a President who is genuinely more interested in winning
the Nobel Prize for Peace than the Academy Award for Acting.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Bump in the Road

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

A few weeks ago, Keith Norman, matched against rival candidate Jay Bailey, seemed a good bet to become the next chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party.

His public boosters included both Shelby County commissioner Sidney Chism, the former Teamster leader and ex-party chairman who leads one of the major party factions, and Desi Franklin, a leader of the Mid-South Democrats in Action, a reformist group that came on the local political scene in the wake of the 2004 presidential campaign.

The combination of Chism’s supporters and the MSDIA group (abetted by members of Democracy in Memphis, an outgrowth of the erstwhile Howard Dean movement) was enough to put Matt Kuhn over as party chairman in 2005. At the time, Kuhn, a youthful political operative and veteran of numerous campaigns, was regarded as a compromise “third-force” choice — a break from the back-and-forth pendulum swings between the party’s “Ford faction” and Chism’s group, loyal, more or less, to Mayor Willie Herenton.

Jackson Baker

Keith Norman

To be sure, local Democrats are disputatious (maybe we should say “free-minded”) enough to do justice to 20th-century humorist Will Rogers’ line, “I’m not a member of an organized political party; I’m a Democrat.” Their loyalties are not so hard and fast as to be confined permanently to one bloc or another.

Lawyer Bailey, son of former longtime county commissioner Walter Bailey, had a span of his own, ranging from members of the old Ford faction to party loyalists grateful for his legal representation of several defeated Democratic candidates who challenged the results of last year’s countywide elections.

Even so, depending on how the delegate-selection process from the party’s March 3rd caucus actually sorted out, the Chism-Franklin arithmetic was regarded in many quarters as good enough to give Norman, a Baptist minister, the advantage in the forthcoming local Democratic convention, to be held on Saturday, March 31st.

This impression was bolstered by Norman’s speaking appearance late last month at a meeting of the MSDIA — one that was attended by curious party members from various factions.

At that event, Norman spoke eloquently and persuasively (as befits someone long used to dealing with a large congregation, in his case, the First Baptist Church on Broad Street). He proclaimed a “big tent” philosophy in which a variety of viewpoints would be welcomed within the party, talked turkey on matters of fund-raising, Get-Out-the-Vote efforts, and managed to skirt potentially divisive issues like abortion and gay rights.

Though Bailey is a trial lawyer with ample rhetorical skills of his own, it seemed obvious to attendees at the MSDIA meeting that Norman, a towering but good-natured presence, would be a hard man to match up to, one-on-one. It seemed clear, too — both from Norman’s presentation and from testimonials paid him by various Democratic luminaries and activists — that his appeal could be wide enough to transcend factional differences.

Jackson Baker

Richard Fields

Ninth District congressman Steve Cohen passed along his compliments, and even David Upton, a longtime Bailey associate and backer, had good things to say about Norman.

Some of his professed supporters, however, may have done him more harm than good.

The Fields Case (Continued)

There was the strange case of attorney Richard Fields, who in recent election years has comported himself in the manner of a would-be kingmaker. In fairness, Fields probably sees himself as some kind of public ombudsman, overseeing the political process in the interests of the people.

In any event, Fields made a big splash during the 2006 countywide election process, composing open letters about the attributes, positive and negative, of various candidates. His widely distributed observations on judicial candidates in particular were regarded as having had palpable effect in the election results.

Fields, however, was not universally accepted as an unbiased observer. Some African-American observers — notably blogger Thaddeus Matthews — argued that Fields was bolstering mainly white, establishment-supported candidates and selectively bashing independent-minded blacks.

The very charge, true or not, was ironic, given Fields’ background as a civil rights attorney, his marriages to black women, and the biracial nature of his several children.

In truth, Fields supported both whites and blacks and Democrats as well as Republicans, though Matthews and others, notably attorney Robert Spence, saw him as having hedged his endorsements, even changing several, in order to create a false appearance of objectivity.

As chronicled in a previous column (“The Fields Case,” February 1st issue), two white candidates for General Sessions judgeships — Janet Shipman and Regina Morrison Newman — saw their promised endorsements belatedly withdrawn by Fields in favor of equally qualified black candidates, Lee Coffee and Deborah Henderson, respectively.

Coffee and Henderson, who, among their other important endorsements, had that of the Shelby County Republican Party, both won, and Shipman and
Newman each later agreed with Spence’s assessment that they had fallen victim to Fields’ need to do some old-fashioned ticket-balancing.

Spence himself had serious arguments with erstwhile supporter Fields during his service some years ago as city attorney and later made unspecified charges that Fields had tried to extort unwarranted favors from him.

Jackson Baker

Legislative Leaders: West Tennessee may have lost some clout in the Tennessee General Assembly, but not Shelby County, which boasts both party leaders in the Senate. Here Mark Norris (left), Republican majority leader, and Jim Kyle, Democratic leader, mull over a compromise on medical tort reform.

When Spence became a candidate in the special Democratic primary to fill a state Senate vacancy early this year, Fields materialized yet again as a public scold, sending out an advisory letter warning voters of what he saw as Spence’s derelictions as city attorney. Spence lost to fellow Democrat Beverly Marrero, who also won the general election last week to succeed Cohen (and interim fill-in senator Shea Flinn) as state senator from District 30.

In any case, Fields’ ad hoc career as commentator on elections and would-be arbiter of candidacies was already well-launched when he rose during the last several minutes of Norman’s meeting with MSDIA members to make a point of revealing his own support of the minister, announcing, in fact, that he had “vetted” Norman’s candidacy beforehand.

That statement, together with Norman’s own wry revelation that Fields had made several telephone calls to him that day to make sure he would be in attendance at the MSDIA event, created an impression, right or wrong, that Fields was a prime mover in the Norman candidacy.

Confusion in the Ranks

Reaction to Fields’ intervention was virtually immediate. This was, after all, no judicial election for which Fields, as a longtime practicing attorney, could be thought of as supplying a pure, even-handed evaluation of credentials. This was the most partisan of all possible partisan matters — the selection of a party leader — and Fields was not exactly the ideal endorser.

He had, after all, been forced to resign last year as a member of the very Democratic committee that will have to decide on a new chairman. His offense? Pooling his legal efforts with those of the state Republican Party to overturn the 2005 special election victory of Democrat Ophelia Ford for reasons of possible election fraud committed on her behalf.

No one on the committee quarreled with Fields’ right to seek that legal end — just not as a member of the Democratic committee. (Ford’s election was, in fact, ultimately voided by the state Senate, though she won election to the seat overwhelmingly in last year’s regular election.)

Several rank-and-file Democrats expressed open displeasure concerning Fields’ involvement in the chairmanship race, and blogger Matthews would later report that Norman, when asked about it, “denounced” Fields as a potential supporter. Asked about that this week, Norman declined comment. He also would neither confirm nor deny that he had distanced himself, as reported by Matthews, from Chism’s support.

For obvious reasons, all of this fuss caused some rethinking about Norman’s inevitability as a chairman. The pastor himself would say only that he preferred to speak of “principles” rather than personalities, that he wanted to avoid immersion in factional disputes, that he had no wish to be judgmental, and that he had resolved to keep his own efforts “on higher ground.”

Last week saw the resolution of two political mini-dramas with the special-election victories of Democrats Marrero and G.A. Hardaway for state Senate and state House positions, respectively. (New District 92 representative Hardaway, a longtime campaigner for father’s-rights legislation in child-custody cases, will presumably bring with him his continued dedication to that cause.)

One other piece of news from the week (actually late last week): Shelby County Election Commission chairman Greg Duckett was named to the state Election Commission — which means that a new member will shortly be named to the county Election Commission.

Whoops! Here comes another political drama — maybe not so mini. The fact is, the local commission is facing not a single routine replacement but something resembling a total makeover — at least of its three-member Democratic Party contingent.

The commission as a whole has come under frequent challenge during the past year for alleged derelictions in supervising elections, and, while the commission’s two Republicans, Rich Holden and Nancye Hines, appear to have escaped their partymates’ wrath and seem assured of a safe return, the remaining Democrats are at risk.

As Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle, a member of the Shelby County legislative delegation that will resolve the issue, put it on Thursday: “I wouldn’t be surprised if either Maura [Sullivan] or O.C. [Pleasant] went off, too. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they both did.”

A total swap-out for the Election Commission’s Democrats? Other legislators from Shelby County — like delegation chairman Joe Towns, who personally took no position on the prospect of a complete makeover — said they’d heard similar conjectures.

The list of Democratic applicants for one, two, or three positions include the two party holdovers, Sullivan and Pleasant, and several other well-known local Democrats, including former commissioner Myra Stiles’ recent countywide candidates Coleman Thompson, Shep Wilbun, and Sondra Becton and local AFSCME leader Dorothy Crook.

Some measure of Democrats’ discontent with the status quo on the commission can be gleaned from the fact that Suzanne Darnell, representing the local Democratic executive committee’s task force on the election process, has requested a meeting with Election Commission members and staff to discuss 14 separate points of misgiving concerning the way elections went last year.

The points ranged from doubts concerning election hardware and software to questions concerning the commission’s oversight and the fact that the post of deputy commission director continues to go unfilled. The late Barbara Lawing, a longtime Democratic activist and proponent of civil rights and feminist issues, will be the only posthumous recipient of the seven Women of Achievement awards that will be given Sunday at 4 p.m., at the University of Memphis-area Holiday Inn as part of National Women’s History Month. Other recipients will be the Rev. Rebekah Jordan, Donna Fortson, Nancy Lawhead, Gertrude Purdue, Modeane Thompson, and Sheila White.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

There’s been so much in print about how Daddy

41’s people are back in the saddle, I was terrified when I saw a photo

of Dan Quayle among the pack. If they’ve called back Dan Quayle to lend intellectual heft, we’re all dead ducks. Fortunately, it was just a file picture of Quayle with the old team.

It does seem that we may be going back to the typical modus operandi of Dubya. Poppy Bush has helped Junior out of the Vietnam War, his failures in the oil business, and other efforts all of his “adult” life.

Unfortunately for us and for the world, the people from the first Bush administration who initially joined this administration were Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. Not exactly the most diplomatic, forward-looking, helpful people to be guiding Dubya.

During the first Gulf War, Bush 41 and his administration knew what it would be like if they tried to take Baghdad — and opted not to go in. Now, the more sober-headed people from that administration are moving in to try to clean up the mess Junior made in his Iraq excursion.

Meanwhile, let us bid farewell and adieu to Brother Donald Rumsfeld, who is so full of wisdom he does not seem to be able to apply it. As a parting gift, here are some of his classic quotes:

1. “If you develop rules, never have more than 10.”

2. “Don’t think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles De Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.”

3. “Needless to say, the president is correct. Whatever it was he said.”

4. “I don’t do quagmires.”

5. “I don’t do diplomacy.”

6. “I don’t do foreign policy.”

7. “I don’t do predictions.”

8. “I don’t do numbers.”

9. “I don’t do book reviews.”

10. “Don’t divide the world into ‘them’ and ‘us.’ Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals or opponents. Accept them as facts. They have their jobs, and you have yours.”

11. “Don’t say, ‘The White House wants.’ Buildings can’t want.”

12. “If I know the answer, I’ll tell you the answer. And if I don’t, I’ll just respond cleverly.”

13. “I believe what I said yesterday. I don’t know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it’s what I said.”

In fact, I’m rather going to miss Rumsfeld’s Zen-like nuggets of wisdom, the most famous of which is probably about the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns:

“As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

According to Newsweek, Air Force secretary Jim Roche went to Rumsfeld early on and said, “Don, you do realize that Iraq could be another Vietnam.”

Replied Rummy: “Vietnam? You think you have to tell me about Vietnam? Of course it won’t be Vietnam. We are going to go in, overthrow Saddam, get out. That’s it.”

I don’t know what happened to that excellent plan, but I would like to know who knew it was unknowable.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Three from the GOP

CREDIT: JB

Mark White is one of those steadfast, reliable, and deserving types it’s easy to bond with and without whom American politics probably couldn’t function. After doing yeoman work in others’ campaigns and as chair of various Republican Party events, White is making his second try for public office.

He lost to one of the party’s rising stars, Brian Kelsey, in a multi-candidate primary for state representative two years ago, but instead of hunkering down and trimming his sails, he decided to go for bigger game this year and is probably the favorite in the August 3rd Republican primary field. As a vice-chair of the Shelby County Republican Party, White certainly will have the lion’s share of support from GOP regulars and the party’s established donors.

The owner of a business that arranges parties and other events, White is also chairman of the local chapter of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, where his event-planning skills come in handy.

White’s current campaign is arguably both hampered and helped by his modest, low-key personality — which, in any case, should wear well if he found himself in office. His chances of getting there are better than they might ordinarily be in this historically Democratic district because of the independent candidacy of Jake Ford. Provided he gets by the rest of the Republican field, White has some reason to hope that a three-way race could divide along political lines rather than racial ones.

One obstacle to White’s primary chances is Tom Guleff, an engaging and thoroughly original personality who has spent the last several weeks running a campaign almost exclusively by e-mail — and gag e-mails at that, most of them satirizing the return to Memphis of one possible Democratic opponent, Joe Ford Jr. The e-mails purport to offer the California entertainment lawyer guided tours of the (presumably unfamiliar) 9th Congressional District. Some e-mails have also poked fun at Jake Ford.

Guleff’s maverick wit has been expended in more general directions as well. Back when various politicians were rushing off to the Mexican border to stage photo ops and other public professions of concern regarding the hot-button immigration issue, Guleff dashed off an e-mail from the Mississippi border, where he purported to be studying first-hand the out-migration from Shelby County due to local crime problems and educational deficiencies.

There is method to his madness, in other words — and some hint of a serious personality behind it all. A West Point graduate whose resume lists a Bronze Star won during service in the first Gulf War, Guleff founded a company that produces sports-training videos and works also as a consultant in employee development. Emphasizing simple themes of family values, individual liberty, and limited government, Guleff has eschewed fund-raising per se and depends on cyberspace (besides his e-mails, he has a Web site, complete with a blog) and personal appearances to get his message across.

For obvious reasons, he’s a long shot, but Guleff has made a lot of people sit up and take notice.

At most of the public forums for 9th District congressional candidates, one candidate has stood out for not standing out. This is Derrick Bennett, former chief accountant for Shelby County government and current comptroller for Crichton College. A Gulf War veteran like Guleff, Bennett is a member of Bellevue Baptist Church, a currently Cordova-based congregation which, much more so than most predominantly white churches, is known for its political consciousness and involvement.

That tilt — which is the conservative side of most issues, social and economic — owes much to the active involvement in political controversies of its late, legendary pastor, Dr. Adrian Rogers. Rogers, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, was a pivotal figure in his denomination’s purging of social moderates from positions of influence, and his political allegiances were best indicated by the eulogistic ceremony he convened at the church after the death of former President Ronald Reagan.

That’s the political matrix for Bennett; the chief difference between him and most other public exponents of it is his race. He’s an African American, and his amiable, conciliatory presence, which makes him a good test case for the GOP’s “outreach” efforts, allowed him to fit in smoothly with the socially conservative ambience of the several forums sponsored by the Black Ministerial Association. Nor have his positions, favoring education and mentoring approaches to problems, been out of sync with the rhetoric of the contest. But he remains a long shot.

The next installment will conclude our series of 9th District candidate profiles.

JB

Rep. Blackburn with District Attorney General Bill Gibbons

7th District Fireworks

Although the busy, highly contested race for the open 9th District congressional seat has attracted most attention locally, another race — that for Tennessee’s 7th District, which runs from suburban Memphis to suburban Nashville — could generate some heat. Indeed, it already has.

Incumbent Republican Marsha Blackburn of Brentwood, unopposed in her primary, is heavily favored. A ranking member of the Republican House leadership in only her second term, Blackburn anchors herself in her party’s most conservative wing and is probably, in the cliché phrase that indicates political weight these days, the 800-pound gorilla in state Republican circles. That’s a metaphor of some irony, though, considering that the relatively petite Blackburn, who possesses a model’s good looks and a flowing blond coif to match, just won a national political Web site’s online contest to decide “the hottest woman in U.S. politics.”

There is no doubting that the three Republicans now fighting it out for their party’s U.S. Senate nomination — Bob Corker, Ed Bryant, and Van Hilleary — were relieved that Blackburn opted to stay in her House seat this time around. The last time she took part in a multi-candidate Republican primary — in 2002, when she won her current seat — she pulled in an absolute majority over a field that included several redoubtable candidates. Even those who consider her politics far right acknowledge her industry, as officeholder and as campaigner.

Blackburn was talking a little politics during an appearance Sunday at the annual Fourth of July picnic at the St. Peter complex at Poplar and McLean, a traditional venue for politicians and one that fairly swarmed with hopefuls in this heavy-ballot election year. Having just returned from her fourth trip to Iraq, Blackburn said she remains optimistic about the military and political outcome there and said gradual reductions in the American troop force are likely and “have been in the plan all along.”

Her response was somewhat less sunny, though, when told of remarks made Saturday by one of her prospective Democratic opponents, Bill Morrison of Bartlett, who teaches social studies at Southwind Middle School. Addressing a group of Germantown Democrats at the Pickering Community Center, Morrison excited his listeners with some old-fashioned verbal pyrotechnics, among other things slamming the incumbent as a secret enemy of Social Security.

But what really caught Blackburn up short on Sunday was Morrison’s claim that, when the two met at a recent event in Middle Tennessee, Blackburn had leaned in close and said, “I’m going to bury you!” To which, in his account, he replied, “Just be sure to get out of my office in November.” That made good theater for the Democrats at Pickering, most of whom are of the Yellow Dog variety, tired of what they consider lackluster “me too” campaigns by party candidates. But Blackburn pronounced it pure fiction.

“That’s absurd!” she said. “He introduced himself, and all I said back was ‘Nice to meet you.'”

Whatever the case, the next meeting the two have is likely to be somewhat strained.

To be able to take on Blackburn, however, Morrison will first have to beat a primary opponent, Randy Morris of Waynesboro, who appeared, along with Morrison, at a forum last week in Cordova. And whoever becomes the Democratic nominee will start way behind both financially and in the polls. And cosmetically, too, of course. But the stocky, balding Morrison, who limps as the result of a motor-vehicle accident he barely survived, promises to try to make things as ugly as he can for the incumbent.

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