May 17, 2008

"I Don't Buy That Obama"

The liberal talking heads of the media want you to believe that the only Democrats not supporting Barack Obama for president now are uneducated rednecks and racists, but I know for a fact that it is a lie. Thursday I was in the Harris-Teeter grocery in Nashville's Hillsboro Village area - the heart of the city's most politically liberal neighborhoods. It's an area where you can still find "Why War?, Wage Peace" signs in front yards, and an area littered with Obama signs.

Behind me in line at the checkout was a man who, after we struck up a conversation, I learned had recently retired after a 30-year professional career in one industry and was now building a successful second career as a real estate agent. He was, clearly, an educated urban professional, not a rural redneck racist. I told him who I worked for and what my job was - communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party, but we talked only about real estate, not politics.

As the clerk handed my my change and receipt and I turned to go, the man said, "Well, you're about to convert another Democrat."

As we had not talked politics at all, I was curious as to what I'd said that had him leaning Republican. Turns out, it wasn't something I said at all. It was something Barack Obama said. What, exactly, I don't know, but I gather it isn't any one thing. Perhaps it was the sum total of Obama's soaring-but-empty rhetoric, or maybe it was his his too-frequent associations with unrepentant terrorists, Hamas-coddlers, anti-semites and hate-America preachers - something had the man moving toward voting for John McCain.

"I just don't buy that Obama," he said.

A lot of Tennessee Democrats "don't buy that Obama" - meaning, they don't believe the image and message he's selling - and despite what all the Democrat talking heads on the national networks say, they aren't racists because they haven't drunk the Obama koolaid. Republicans didn't vote against Obama in West Virginia last week. Democrats did. Republicans didn't deliver Tennessee to Hillary Clinton in February; Democrats did.

Is it really a good strategy for the elites and spokespersons for a major political party to call large numbers of its own members racists because they chose one candidate instead of another? Especially when the choices are an African-American man and a woman? If Clinton's Democrat voters are racists, does it not follow that Obama's Democrat voters are sexists?

No.

And a political party whose elites and media talking heads so publicly and slanderously disdain and disparage the voting booth choices made by large numbers of its own members doesn't deserve their ongoing support.

Democrats who "don't buy that Obama" are welcome to cross the aisle and vote for John McCain this fall. Oh, and if you're a Tennessee Democrat who isn't jumping on the Obama bandwagon, as long as you're thinking about making your political purchase on the right side of the aisle this time, you really ought to stick around long enough to check out our great candidates for elective office at the state level.

If you're a typical pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, fiscally conservative and socially conservative Tennessee Democrat - that is, a Democrat like many of those who live in the 86 of Tennessee's 95 counties that Obama lost in February - you'll like what you see. I guarantee it.