Blue Collar Muse

Nashville has a couple of new radio personalities over at 99.7 FM, WWTN. Ralph Bristol is on early in the AM with Nashville’s Morning News. Beyond his content, my favorite part of his show is simply listening to his voice. He sounds JUST like Paul Harvey. It’s hard to see that as a bad thing in radio. He’s followed by Michael DelGiorno who not only does NOT sound like Paul Harvey but comes to us from Oklahoma, of all places.

I’d ask, “Can anything good come out of Oklahoma?” except that Michael is here now so the question must be changed to “Is there anything good left in Oklahoma and did Michael remember to turn out the lights when he left?” For the record, I did four years of college in Kansas, so I get a pass when hammering the plains states.

A caller to Michael’s show responded to the Tennessee Senate’s vote to increase the tax on a pack of cigarettes and their vote to ban smoking in a wide variety of locations with a simple yet instructive observation. The Senate did not try to do all of this at once. Rather they introduced a bill here, a resolution there and before we knew it they had passed a number of things we are REALLY unhappy with. Hearing the comment I was reminded of the old adage on incrementalism, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!”.

Looking at local issues like these and the enormous dissatisfaction with the national GOP in general, I cannot help but conclude that the Elephant Party either has never heard that saying or has forgotten it. Their absence from the fight to actively oppose a spate of bad proposed legislation and their inexplicable support for much of the same is surprising in its existence and stunning in its longevity.

If they don’t come to their senses, and soon, there will be little left of a once proud and grand institution come November of 2008. It will have been served up, a bite at a time, to be devoured in the feeding frenzy that is politics. Sadly, they will have no one to blame but themselves.

Thinking that I prefer host to hors d’oeuvre …

Blue Collar Muse

UPDATE: Remember when the Bush campaign was proud to trumpet that a large percentage of its contributors were from smaller donations? In 2000, 25% of all donations from individuals were less than $200. This is actual cash as a percentage of all donations from individuals. In 2004, that figure rose to 32% (though it’s unclear if that’s a percentage of cash totals or donor totals).

Today, the Washington Times reported that the RNC had fired it’s entire telephone fundraising staff without warning for, among other things, a 40% drop in small donor contributions. WND reports that, “Any assertion that overall donations have gone down is patently false,” RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt told the Times via e-mail. “We continue to out-raise our Democrat counterpart by a substantive amount (nearly double).”

So overall donations are up but small donor contributions are down. The people are speaking. The bite of the elephant that the GOP is chewing making it difficult to hear? Immigration.

Elephant bite updates will continue …

BCM

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 12:39 pm and is filed under 2008 election season, Conservative, Elephant Bites, Politics, Talk Radio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.