So there I am listening to Marsha Blackburn’s gubernatorial primary victory speech, which is just what you would expect from her. Well, I take that back. I was hoping she would make a whole thing out of crushing various food products to emphasize her points, as she did in her campaign ad back in July. She could say she wasn’t going to let Tennessee become like California and then crush some California grapes in her fists. Then she could also assure her audience that she wouldn’t let us become like New York while she let bagels or large, flat pieces of pizza squeeze through her fingers. She had a gimmick we all recognized, and she dropped it after one bonkers ad. What a wasted opportunity!
Maybe she’s saving that for the main race. Let’s hope.
No, it’s this part that caught my attention. (I’m quoting from the Nashville Banner's coverage, if you want to go read the rest.)
“If you’re someone who wants a God-fearing, freedom-loving, flag-waving, guitar-picking, NASCAR-loving, Vol-cheering, pro-life, low-tax beacon of freedom, you are in the right place,” Blackburn said.
Man, that hit me right in the feels — and I’m not a Republican. Yes, I do want to go back to a time when Tennessee Republicans were God-fearing, NASCAR-loving beacons of freedom. But who can afford to go to a NASCAR race these days? And when was the last time Vols fans could feel truly confident that the team was going to lose fewer than four games? And how free are you when Marsha Blackburn can, at any moment, call your boss and get you fired for talking bad about a racist most people in the state have never even heard of?
Tennessee’s senior U.S. senator is heavily favored to win November’s general election
But also, Republicans have been running Tennessee for nearly 30 years. If they haven’t gotten us our freedom beacons by now, I don’t think it’s going to happen. Well, maybe this isn’t all their fault. I suppose the cheapest freedom beacons come from overseas. Tariffs are probably making it impossible to get freedom beacons, and there don't seem to be a many homegrown freedom beacon manufacturers springing up.
Hey, Andy Ogles is out of a job. Maybe Blackburn can appoint him Freedom Beacon Commissioner, and he can live out his days making AI art of himself making freedom beacons and pretending like of course he’s handed them out in real life.
But it’s wild for Blackburn to run on a message that’s basically, “Hey, remember when most Tennesseans didn’t feel any shame about being Republican? Let’s go back to that!” when she is one of the Republicans who brought all this shame to the party.
Do you think this allusion to some alternate-history Republican Tennessee is an early indication of how the nationwide party is thinking about how to pitch itself in the post-Trump era? A message that’s centered on promising that ordinary people can feel good about being a Republican again?
The problem with running on that message in a Republican state is that the message is built implicitly on the idea that people are unhappy with being Republican (the party in charge during all this evil chaos), and so they should vote Republican (the party in charge). And in Blackburn’s case, she can’t even argue that the problem isn’t “real” Republicanism, it’s Trumpism, because she’s a huge Trump supporter! It’s a promise of change that she can never deliver.
The trouble she has is that 57 percent of Tennessee Republicans voted for someone else rather than her. So clearly, she needs a message that will convince those folks to support her. And at least 1 in 4 of them is banana-pants far right, as evidenced by their votes for Monty Fritts. Right now, the banana-pants wing of the Republican party is arguing that women shouldn’t vote. I’m curious what message would convince them to vote for a woman, when they don’t believe women should be in public life.
It’s clearly a hard needle for Blackburn to thread. She should probably go back to crushing the foodstuff of her enemies. At least that’s a clear message. It'll be messy in the case of the foodstuff of Memphis, but clear.
