BillHobbs.com is a frequently updated blog of original reporting and commentary by Bill Hobbs, a longtime Nashville journalist and media relations adviser. I am currently serving as communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party, a job I began on Oct. 29, 2007.
Mr. Turnbow has posted a brilliant essay on why he rarely votes for Democrats even though he grew up in a Yellow Dog Democrat kind of family. It's a powerful essay that exposes a simple truth about the soul-destroying nature of the Democratic welfare state...
People often ask me why me and my sister left the Democrat Party after growing up in it in southern west Tennessee. The answer for me really has nothing to do with the Bible as a lot of the talking heads on the networks claim is the reason why southerners left the Democrats in droves in the 90's. It has to do with witnessing the failure of the Democrats social agenda firsthand.
My dad and his brothers absolutely worshipped the Democrat Party...
They made their living by farming and they would also buy old homes and fix them up and sale them for a profit. They did all this despite not being able to read or write and there started the problems that I developed with the Democrat Party.
When dad was of school age in the 50's, the Democrats were in their 80th year of having a power lock on the state government in Tennessee....EIGHTY YEARS PEOPLE. Why hadn't the Democrats in Nashville developed a plan by that time that would have properly educated these people like my father who literally worshipped them?
Then came the dependence on the Democrats welfare programs. When the income from farming dipped in the early 80's, dad went and signed up on food stamps and they also increased the monthly check he was drawing. I noticed a change in him when he did this. He gradually stopped working on the farm like he had been doing before he signed us all up on welfare.
He started becoming fearful of someone seeing him out on the farm working because he was afraid they would turn him in and they would eliminate the food stamps and the monthly check he was getting. Then when 1986 rolled around and he was diagnosed with lung cancer he just completely gave up on everything and became totally dependent on welfare the final seven years of his life. He went from getting up at 5 am to go to work on the farm to sitting in his chair by the window watching people go to work and waiting on the mailman to come by at 1 pm every afternoon. It was a situation I wouldn't wish on anyone.
That's why I have only voted for two Democrats in my life so far. ... I can not in good conscious support a political party that discourages people from working the way they do.
Like I said, brilliant. Read the whole thing here.
I know that is definitely what happened in my neck of the woods. He really put a vivid picture on what we all have felt but couldn't exactly put it into words.
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