One good thing to come out of this legislative season is that I think we’re seeing the Tennessee Republican strategy of “Blame the Libs!” run out of steam. I’ve been thinking about the story that Fox 17 ran earlier this month about U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn taking to Twitter/X to make sure liberals know they’re not welcome here.
My first bit of evidence? The URL for said story is fox17.com/news/local/blah-04-18-2026. (I bolded the important part.) Whether it was the reporter or an editor, whoever first loaded this story onto Fox 17's site thought the most accurate description was “blah.” Same, mystery Fox 17 employee. Same.
Second, Blackburn’s tweet sounds so quaint: “People are in pursuit of affordability, and that’s why they’re flocking to Tennessee. In Tennessee, we welcome new families and businesses as long as they check the blue state policies at the state line.”
Whew. You can tell Blackburn’s been in D.C. a long time with this talk of Tennessee being affordable!
Immigration, school voucher expansion among the defining issues at the state Capitol in 2026
But the part that really tickled me is her warning that newcomers need to “check the blue state policies at the state line.” Is she under the impression that liberals are moving here? If newcomers to Tennessee are grouching loudly enough to get under Blackburn’s skin, that’s a disagreement among conservatives. The rest of us are just waiting out one terrible thing after another, and then scrambling in the aftermath to check and make sure we’re all OK.
But it’s hard to have a unifying Republican message of “some of us suck and need to shut up,” so I get why Blackburn is eager to make sure her liberal boogeyman stays propped up. Then she can still yell about how people need to shut up, but she doesn’t have to worry about hurting the feelings of anyone on her side.
The article goes on for a while — quoting a couple of residents, as well as Republican state Rep. Johnny Garrett (R-Goodlettsville) and Tennessee Democratic spokesperson Brandon Puttbrese — before concluding with a statement sent to Fox 17 by Blackburn. She says:
“Tennesseans want government to get out of their way, and they firmly reject radical leftist policies that protect illegal aliens over Americans, allow men to invade women’s spaces, coerce children to mutilate their bodies, and force taxpayers to foot the bill for all of this and more. Radical leftists and their policies are not welcome in Tennessee.”
Blackburn is in for a surprise when she sees what the Tennessee state government is getting up to, because it loves getting in Tennesseans’ way. People are running around calling state House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) Nashville’s “shadow mayor” because he’s so busy sticking his nose into the city’s business.
Blackburn's rant makes me a little nostalgic for the days when Republicans could gin up their base with abortion. That was a more straightforward time. You could read a sentence and know what it said. Now we have this crap that I have to read five times before I realize it’s a series of anti-trans digs. I swear, anytime any Republican in this state brings up “men in women’s spaces,” you should just read that as an admission that they don’t have anything meaningful to contribute to the conversation. And if we look at the people who have lived through this supposed nightmare of “men in women’s spaces,” apparently what happens is you get to be a minor celebrity and then cops bring you flowers on your birthday.
Less than a year after winning reelection to her Senate seat, the right-wing Trump acolyte has declared her candidacy for governor
As for coercing children to mutilate their bodies — a thing that does not happen in real life — that tactic worked a lot better to scare voters before we all learned that Republicans would cover up a massive pedophile ring full of actual victims who actually exist.
Not that any of this matters. Blackburn is almost certainly going to be our next governor. But that’s also what makes this so funny. She doesn’t have to come out and say the oldest fuddiest-duddiest stuff on the internet. She doesn’t need to persuade voters to vote for her. Even if voter turnout is depressed by a lack of enthusiasm, she will win. Even if there are some number of people in this state who will vote only for the loudest anti-trans candidate, that’s already her!
It’s like Blackburn is overcome with nostalgia for 2022 and is just going to run this campaign, such as it is, like she’s back in that simpler time — when a senator could speak at an anti-trans rally in front of a bunch of Proud Boys and also rail against immigrants without knowing she’s calling to mind citizens killed in the street by our government and little kids in bunny ears being used as bait. You know, the good old days during Biden’s presidency.
Poor Blackburn. She can rail all she wants against Democratic policies, but it’s pretty apparent she misses Democratic leadership.
