Commentary: Personal responsibility? Any Tennessee Republican leader ready?

“Personal responsibility” is a favorite slogan for Tennessee Republican political leaders.

Until it comes to their own words and actions.

After the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday Tennessee GOP leaders issued their obligatory statements of condemnation.  

U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty said: 

“Yesterday was a shocking day of lawlessness… Last night we reconvened with our Senate colleagues to fulfill our constitutional duty to certify the 2020 election results and prepare for a peaceful transition of power.”

Absent was any acceptance of personal responsibility or accountability for the day’s madness.

One wonders what they were thinking Wednesday night as they sat there like the backbenchers they are, and will be for the foreseeable future, as U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney spoke:

“The objectors have claimed they are doing so on behalf of the voters. Have an audit, they say, to satisfy the many people who believe that the election was stolen. Please! No Congressional-led audit will ever convince those voters, particularly when the President will continue to claim that the election was stolen. The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. That is the burden, and the duty, of leadership.” 

But it is not just the two senators.  The list of those Republicans failing Romney’s test of leadership begins with former U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander and includes Gov. Bill Lee, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, House Speaker Cameron Sexton, Tennessee Attorney General Herb Slattery and all the Republican state lawmakers who signed the two letters after the election pledging their fealty to President Trump.

Let’s be clear, these are smart individuals.  They knew the President’s election con from the beginning was as principled as a three-card-Monte street hustle.  This was not an allegation on the order of the election fraud of the Crump or the Ford machines in Memphis, or Gene “Little Evil” Jacobs in Nashville.

To believe Rudy Guliani and Sidney Powell, one had to imagine a conspiracy spanning the states of Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia with the active participation of local and state Democratic and Republican election officials, not to mention election machine company staff and technicians.

No, these Tennessean Republican leaders chose not to respect their own voters with artfully worded dodges.  On Nov. 20, Alexander had this to say:

“Recounting votes and resolving disputes after a close election is not unprecedented and should reassure Americans that election results are valid.

“Al Gore finally conceded 37 days after the 2000 election, and then made the best speech of his life accepting the result.

“My hope is that the loser of this presidential election will follow Al Gore’s example, put the country first, congratulate the winner and help him to a good beginning of the new term.”

We know now how that “hope” turned out.

Words do have consequences, and the failure to speak words of truth and fact has consequences as well.

The continued failure of the Tennessee Republican leadership to accept their responsibility for the mob attacking and ransacking the Capitol is not a promising sign for the body politic of the Volunteer State.