With the GOP stoking anti-Obama resentment, old times here are not forgotten

The Republican Party is derided nightly on the cable TV gabfests as irrelevant in national politics. To see what the GOP's become, look at last weekend's noisy demonstration in Washington, D.C. It's too white, Southern and cranky, critics say—the Rush Limbaugh-led Party of No.But this state's Republicans haven't been so revved up about their electoral prospects since Bill Clinton was president in 1994, the year they shocked Democrats by sweeping the governorship and both U.S. Senate races. What's all the excitement about? In the alternate reality known as Tennessee, teabaggers rule!

It's no secret Barack Obama is wildly unpopular here. John McCain not only won this state by 15 points in last year's election, he took some rural counties by 40 points or more. Those mind-boggling margins helped give Republicans majorities in both houses of the legislature for the first time in 140 years.

It's hard to imagine, but Obama might do even worse if the voting were today. As the 2010 elections approach, Republicans up and down the ballot hope they can ride to victory on a wave of anti-Washington rage.

The parallels with '94 are striking. A Democratic president in the middle of his first term had been bloodied in a battle over health care reform, and the Angry White Man was on the rampage.

I witnessed this madness firsthand at a rally in Williamson County that fall. Warming up to hear from their hero—Fred Thompson—Republicans gleefully performed an over-the-top skit in which a Hillary Clinton character murdered a character playing Vince Foster, the White House aide whose suicide became a topic of conspiracy theories.

Sound familiar? Now, teabaggers denounce President Obama as a socialist foreigner out to snuff our grandparents and indoctrinate our children.

Republicans Zach Wamp and Ron Ramsey, both running to succeed the term-limited Phil Bredesen as governor, are psyched about the prospect of history repeating itself. With no wussy qualms about coming across as extremists, they're embracing the anti-Obama crowd and stoking the anger.

At his Labor Day picnic, Wamp aligned himself with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who suggested last spring his state could secede from the union. "We're going to protect freedom in our states and we don't want the federal government running all over us," Wamp declared.

Previously on the stump, he made the stunning pledge to meet Barack Obama at the state line like Rambo if the president comes to confiscate our weapons.

Wamp's hometown newspaper is aghast. Last week, the Chattanooga Times Free Press accused the congressman of "channeling old-style Dixiecrats" like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond.

"Given the budget crisis that is certain to haunt Tennessee's educational and public service programs for several more years, we would have hoped for a more astute and thoughtful platform from Mr. Wamp," the paper opined. "If his strategy is to pander to his party's right wing, and ignore the real issues, it's hard to see why he should be governor."

Not to be outdone, Ramsey has joined Wamp in telling the federal guvmint to get off our backs. (OK, that juicy stimulus cash was a little too tempting to resist, but there's no need to go into that.) States' rights! That's their war cry, and they don't care if it recalls the racist Old South.

"I'm frightened by the direction of this country," the Senate speaker told a Tea Party rally on Labor Day. Tennessee's "an island of sanity in our nation right now," he said. "The 10th Amendment means the 10th Amendment."

That last pearl of wisdom drew what the Kingsport Times-News described as "a hearty round of applause" from teabaggers.

Even Joe Kirkpatrick, a wacky fringe candidate also supposedly running for governor, thinks Wamp and Ramsey are nuts. "All of the sudden, Lt. Gov. Ramsey and Congressman Wamp seem to want to extract D.C. from our state's affairs, and as Zach says, he'll meet em at the border. That's just silly," Kirkpatrick says on his blog, joe4gov.com.

When Ramsey popped up at the Legislative Plaza last week, I asked him whether he isn't talking a little too much about crazy stuff in his campaign at the expense of real issues.

"Those are the real-world issues out there," he shot back. "Those people who think the tea parties have been fabricated, that they've been set up by community organizers, are flat-out wrong. People are concerned about the direction of the federal government. If those aren't real issues, you're not in the real world. That's all I've got to say."

It's a little too early to tell how this will play out in next year's elections, especially with the health-care debate still undecided. But Democrats ought to worry. Another Republican tsunami may be on the way.

Email jwoods@nashvillescene.com.