Tennessee teabaggers to Senator Lamar Alexander, retire or else:
“During your tenure in the Senate we have no doubt that you voted in a way which you felt was appropriate. Unfortunately, our great nation can no longer afford compromise and bipartisanship, two traits for which you have become famous,” the letter read, according to the Journal.
“America faces serious challenges and needs policymakers who will defend conservative values, not work with those who are actively undermining those values,” the letter continued. “Quite honestly, your voting record shows that you do not represent the conservative values that we hold dear and the votes you have cast as Senator are intolerable to us.”
The letter encouraged Alexander to retire rather than take on a primary challenger, according to the Journal, although no Republican has yet come forward to challenge Alexander’s seat in 2014.
Sounds like an unveiled threat to me. I guess it cannot be called blackmail since it was done publicly. I wonder who the Tennessee teabaggers use as their enforcer? I bet someone in the Rand Paul camp coulda set them up with a horse’s head…
This post is, of course, an elaborate ruse to post this clip from The Godfather:
“the Journal” – is this quoted in the Wall Street Journal?
Intolerance and an almost tribal claim of ownership (“‘our’ great nation can no longer afford, etc.”). Sigh.
Thanks, Peter. It’s jaw-dropping, this letter.
The sad thing about this is, if he gets beat up in a primary battle, as opposed to retiring as they requested, I don’t think TN Dems have a candidate who could take on the wounded Alexander. But the letter is a thing of beauty, LOL. Kinda like the SC Teaparty saying SC Reps were too liberal.
Jaysus, Alexander has been one of the Senate’s first-string fuckwits for ages, an only slightly more restrained version of Todd Akin. How on earth did he suddenly become the Republicans’ Ted Kennedy?
More proof that the tea partiers are a toxic stew of nativists, Birchers, anti-tax libertarian yahoos, unmedicated paranoid schizophrenics and Southern reconstructionists, all led from behind by whacked-out right-wing robber-baron billionaires, the top 0.0001% steering 10% of the electorate to destroy the bottom 80%. So, yeah, on the terms of that bunch, even Lamar Alexander is a left-wing queen.
@Laura: Indeed it is. I took it from TPM who based its story on the WSJ.
is this another lugar win?