Roy Exum
When I stopped to vote yesterday, it was hardly lost on me the loneliest at the polls were the Democrats. Tennessee is so Republican right now it is almost embarrassing, and the fact is that quality liberal candidates – who I am convinced we desperately need -- have gone the way of the unicorn and dodo bird. Of course, that’s easier to swallow, given the most recent outlandish behavior of the thoroughly deflated left, yet if I have learned one great lesson in my years on earth, it is: ‘Stay calm … we’ll get through this.”
Last month I endured a health storm after the unexpected followed knee-replacement surgery but I was totally aware of a life rule you can etch in stone -- no matter how bleak the outlook is at times, the horizon will change, I am constantly buoyed by the promise that if we just hang in there, praying for patience, there has never been a night so dark that the morning light still didn’t arrive right on time.
My first take-away from the Republican Party primary is that not in my three-score and ten have I seen four better candidates to vie as our next governor.
A month ago, I openly questioned how I could possibly pick just one, but then dirty politics, coupled with the sickening belief in slandering your opponent for selfish gain, left only Bill Lee as my personal pick to do what is best for our state.
Quite to the contrary, for the same Republican Party to then offer us an election-day menu where the only entrées were Senate hopeful Marsha Blackburn, as well as Congress returnees Chuck Fleischmann and Scott DesJarlais, I can show you three key votes where I would immediately and gratefully side with a Democrat candidate it only they weren’t blood-sworn to obey the loopy-loosies who ushered the party into its current suicide march.
In other words, today I see the political pendulum about as far right as it could possibly be, but in the way modern civilization has always proven, the masses will soon grow weary of the Republicans’ boorish thinking and a new type of candidate will emerge – progressive, keenly interested in doing what’s right for America rather than adhere to some obviously failed far-left diatribe that is carefully prescribed in the name of party loyalty. We need powerful independents as never before.
Trust me on this: the majority of the American people, from far left to far right, are just as dissatisfied with the Blackburns and ‘Do Nothing Chucks’ as a vast following of Republicans admit they are today. Really! The Republicans can gloat, “look at me,” but within the masses is a majority of our neighbors who are far dissatisfied with yesterday’s results. Those aren’t choices; not at all – eight of ten will describe the winners as “the lessor of two evils.” Doesn’t that give a patriot hope!
It could well be – this is my thinking – that the Maxine Walters and Nancy Pelosi types have ruined the Democratic framework to the point of no return but the fact remains there are millions of great Americans and true patriots out there who fervently believe there is a far better answer than is being forced on us by the two equally-disdainful political parties and their glaring mishmash agendas.
Earlier this year – check me if you please -- Tennessee Republicans simply stood by and said nothing when seven candidates who wanted to replace Bob Corker in the Senate were “disqualified” by the state Republican leaders. The only people with the right to reject any candidate are the voters themselves, yet we allow some rube, a shallow puppet who was once employed by Blackburn herself, eliminate seven Tennesseans at will. This is simply ludicrous but who dares to stand for what is good and right when the convicts – a crummy cast at best -- are running the prison?
Don’t fret. Study any chapter of world history and the focal point is the pendulum. Don’t dare buy what the shallow are selling or the veils that hide our lawmakers’ motives. America is just as angry and upset as you and I find ourselves right now. We have no choice than be at the whim of either dysfunctional party and the shallow leadership that plagues both. America is so much better than this.
The pendulum will swing, sooner rather than later, and Thursday’s election, if you will carefully study it and its consequences, will now render results you will not like in the next four years. But fear not; that is exactly what causes the pendulum to move. Just watch … you’ll see.
America has never, ever, failed to rise above its failures. Watch the pendulum as it begins a new swing. I think the swing, based on yesterday’s elections, just started.