I almost feel sorry for Joe Carr. Almost. While he’s trying to make the case that he’s a better choice for US Senate, the outside group hired to help him probably does more to hurt his chances than anything.
Joe can’t help it. At the event in Nashville where a national talk radio personality endorsed him, his name was only mentioned seven times. Seven times. That’s it. I lost count of how many times they mentioned Lamar Alexander from the podium. Seems like all the out-of-state help is not so much for Joe Carr but AGAINST Lamar Alexander.
Tennesseans like voting for Lamar Alexander. We appreciate hard work and those who put their time in–not just riding the clock, but those who get results. To run statewide, he started out by walking across the state. He recently told a huge group of supporters gathered in Greeneville that years ago, while running for Governor, it took him eight days to walk across Greene County.
Here in Tennessee, we demand a lot from our elected officials; and we expect them to work hard on our behalf. We don’t like it when people try to cut in line, and that’s what Joe Carr is trying to do. And no, I’m not saying that ANYONE challenging Lamar is trying to jump line. Joe knows that his qualifications simply don’t add up: that’s why he’s relying on the exact same tactics used by union thugs and left-wing loonies.
Last week, while Lamar’s Standing up For Tennessee bus tour was criss-crossing Middle and East Tennessee as smoothly as a sewing machine, I saw something that looked completely out of place–a handful of zombie-like protesters kept popping up at some of Lamar’s stops along the way. I dug a little deeper. These “protesters” are a sorry bunch. I hesitate call them protesters–they are actors. Paid actors. They are actors hired to act like protesters. They record everyone around them. They shout at Alexander supporters; they shout at him. They shove their iPads and cell phone cameras in his face, hoping to catch him stuttering. They block traffic to pose in front of his tour bus. Then they race to their parents’ basement to upload their impotent videos for the enjoyment of their tens of followers.
Why? For money. We could blame Obama, at least in part, for the anemic “recovery” our economy us supposedly undergoing. A few college kids told Lamar supporters at these events that they saw job openings on the Beat Lamar website–but that when they applied and even took the jobs, they thought they’d be canvassing neighborhoods and placing calls for the August 7 primary. They were snookered by coward and chicken-hawk Michael Patrick Leahy.
Leahy’s BeatLamar website even boasted last week they were paying $100 for tips leading to…information about Lamar’s Standing Up for Tennessee tour. In fact, Leahy, a resident of some other state, bragged that people had actually collected the $100 fee he was offering for bus tour stops. Paying actors as protesters, paying for bus stop information–at this rate all Joe needs to do is pay people to vote for him.
The impression these mean-spirited attacks gives off is like the message from a supervisor at a minimum wage job: “if we could pay you less, we would”–as in, “if we the Tea Party could vote for someone else besides Carr, we would.”
