Keep Bringing Up the Tennessee Income Tax!

Gray Sasser and the Tennessee Democrat Party are at it again. Once again they are rearing the ugly specter of a state income tax to try and whip up votes for their legislative candidates and working in a little revisionist history at the same time.

TDP snoops discovered that former Gov. Don Sundquist recently donated funds from his political action committee Majority Tennessee PAC to several Republican house and senate candidates. The funds were old campaign contributions and Sundquist hasn't been a candidate since his second term as governor ended in 2003.

Sasser awkwardly attempts to use Sundquist's contributions to accuse the recipients of hypocrisy in their opposition to a state income tax:

"'This is yet another example of candidates like Dolores Gresham, Ken Yager and Vance Dennis saying one thing on the campaign trail and then doing another in real life,'" said Democratic Party Chairman Gray Sasser. “They run around their districts claiming they’re against the income tax. Then they turn around and pad their pockets with Don Sundquist’s leftover campaign cash.'

Sasser added: 'We can draw either one of two conclusions: Either they support the income tax, or they’re hypocrites. Either way, Tennessee voters deserve to know the truth.'

Sasser and the TDP are practicing revisionist history, trying to place themselves above the fray that was the income tax revolt of 2001 and 2002. I can't argue with their contention that Gov. Sundquist was the leading proponent of the tax. But to label him as the "father of the income tax plan"--as Sasser does--is preposterous.

There were plenty of surrogates for the income tax. I hate to break it to you Gray, but most were Democrats. At the time, Democrats controlled both houses and thus controlled the agenda. Remember the leadership roles Bob Rochelle (in the senate) and Jimmy Naifeh (in the house) played in trying to ram it through the General Assemby?

Oh, that's right. I forget that Democrats have selective memory loss.

When you keep bringing up the income tax debacle, Gray, you're only reminding voters of the role your party played in the whole mess and only hurting your own party.

In that case, keep bringing it up! Let's have another press release! Real soon!

Tennessee Democrats: Look at the Cow, Not Randy Camp

In a burst of creativity, the Tennessee Democrat Party and their venerable leader, Gray Sasser, have recruited a cow to stalk Delores Gresham, Republican candidate for Senate District 26.

As if voters in southwest Tennessee haven't already been inundated with campaign signs and television ads, now they must contend with a Democrat operative dressed as Bessie the cow littering the countryside with "No-Grant Pledge" leaflets.

This is their innovative ploy to draw attention to the fact that Mrs. Gresham's husband received $26,850 in taxpayer-funded farm grants as part of the Tennessee Agricultural Enhancement Program while she was a state representative. The program was initiated by Democrat Gov. Phil Bredesen to help state farmers and yes, Mrs. Gresham's husband is a farmer. As long as Mr. Gresham applied for the grants just like any other farmer would with no preferential treatment, there's nothing at all wrong with it. Can Gray Sasser prove he didn't?

So now we have Bessie flaunting a Democrat-produced "No-Grant Pledge" that the Democrat candidate, Randy Camp, has signed but Mrs. Gresham has not. It states that if elected, the undersigned candidates would not accept funds from the Tennessee Agricultural Enhancement Program or any other state-funded grants.

Want to know why Camp was so eager to sign this propoganda? Because he's not a farmer! It's easy for a lawyer and a politician to disavow farm grants when it has nothing to do with what he does for a living.

The Gresham family are farmers, and we all know that family farms across the country are struggling to keep the family tradition going. We need them and frankly they could use the extra bit of government help. It's disingenuous for the Tennessee Democrat Party to flaunt Camp's signature on a document that would be detremential to Mrs. Gresham's family's livelihood.

Of course this is just a sideshow by Gray Sasser to divert voter attention away from his own candidate Camp, an admitted adulterer for twenty years. Anyone who cannot be faithful to his spouse cannot be trusted as a public servant. Period.

The Tennessee Democrat Party is a joke. From ridiculous press releases to stolen primaries to volunteers parading in cow costumes, how can voters take this collection of goofballs seriously?

UPDATE: Here's the Democrat operative parading as Bessie the cow. Utterly ridiculous.