Well, I’m not in Kansas anymore. I’m back in Tennessee, but I’m borrowing WiFi in the lobby of an auto-repair establishment (don’t ask the details) while trying to get home.
But being back in the Volunteer state did remind me that I wanted to comment on a recent New York Times piece that ran just before our state primaries. The story is about the brutal, at times, race to win the GOP nomination to chase the U.S. Senate seat that for years belonged to the courtly Lamar Alexander.
The establishment candidate, Bill Hagerty won the race, but it was tight. The Times team focused, of course, on the toxic existence of Citizen Donald Trump. The president’s endorsement of Hagerty was important, but that was only one reason that Tennessee Republicans — at least the ones I know — were so torn up in this race.
But there’s no need to discuss cultural and religious issues in a Bible Belt state like Tennessee when you can focus exclusively on You. Know. Who. Thus, this double-decker headline:
Tennessee Republicans, Once Moderate and Genteel, Turn Toxic in the Trump Era
In the Senate primary race to replace Lamar Alexander, two candidates are fighting to see who can better emulate the president. It isn’t pretty.
The thesis statement near the end adds:
What is perhaps already clear, however, is that the Republican Party that Mr. Alexander long sought to shape — a “governing party,” he once wrote, that translated “principled ideas” into “real solutions” — is not the one he will ultimately leave behind.
Both of the major candidates were conservatives, but one — Hagerty — had a blue-chip GOP establishment heritage, with ties to President George W. Bush. The other, Dr. Manny Sethi — an Indian-American, Harvard-educated surgeon at Vanderbilt University hospital — was clearly running as the outsider.
Believe it or not, Trump backed the GOP establishment guy even as Sethi attempted to appeal to voters on many of Trump’s cultural issues.
Here is another block of the Trump-centric prose:
The increasingly toxic primary, in a state once known for its genteel politics, highlights the transformation of the Republican Party since Mr. Alexander first captured this seat nearly two decades ago. Whereas Mr. Alexander, 80, centered his first Senate primary message on electoral experience and education policy, his would-be successors have defined their pitches almost entirely in terms of Donald Trump — campaigning not on ideas and vision but on a blanket promise to support the president, and to spurn those who cross him.
In a state where 94 percent of Republican voters support Mr. Trump, it’s not a bad strategy. But for some observers, the … election has signified the undignified demise of the longtime centrist flavor of Tennessee Republicanism. Politicians who might have once aspired to the bipartisan statesmanship of Senator Howard Baker are now happy to contort themselves to the ideological and dispositional demands of Trumpism.
Now, what is missing from this equation?
No surprise — it’s religion and cultural issues. Lots of Tennessee Republicans were struggling to figure out who was the “business” conservative in this race and who was the “cultural” conservative. The term “moderate,” these days, has little to do with a political landscape defined by Trump.
You see, lots of GOP folks in Tennessee have started wondering if the big-business Nashville establishment is still willing to talk to religious conservatives, let alone make cause with them on First Amendment issues.
If you think that the “Trump” label settles all of that, you haven’t been paying attention.
So what does this Times story have to say about this divide in Tennessee politics?
So let’s search the text of this story for the word "church." Nothing.
"Abortion”? Nothing.
How about "religious liberty." Nothing.
Hmmmm. Is this Times piece talking about the Tennessee where I live?
Why avoid discussing the religious and cultural issues that are crucial in GOP contests in this state?
Just asking.