The TNGOP chair has notified the members of her state executive committee as to her decision regarding the challenge to Speaker Kent Williams’ status as a Republican. From the desk of Robin Smith:
We have watched during the last 28 days to see if Kent Williams would assign the 13 Committee Chairmanships to the Republican Majority. He did not.
We watched to see how Rep. Williams would assign office space and staff to the Republican Majority. He has crammed 49 of his colleagues in 46 offices.
We have watched Rep. Williams maintain the same wage practices with Democrat staff earning more than the Republican staff, even as democrat staffers are assigned to fewer representatives.
We have learned that Mr. Williams has met with Governor Bredesen as the “Republican Representative” on the critical issue of the budget. Mr. Williams has withheld all of this information from the Republican Caucus encumbering their policy statements and decisions.
We have been repeatedly informed that Rep. Williams refuses to caucus with the Republicans.
We requested that members of the Caucus provide the TRP with specific examples of assistance that Rep. Williams has given to our candidates, caucus or party. None could.
So it is with regret that I inform you of my decision to remove Kent Williams’ status as a bona fide Republican.http://politics.nashvillepost.com/2009/02/09/williams-to-get-the-boot-in-twenty/Atlantic blogger Marc Ambinder:
Mr. Republican Speaker, You're Not A Republican Anymore
So get out of our party. And while you're at it, formally relinquish our party's claim on the majority in the state house. According to the Tennessee Republican Party, the Speaker of the state house, a Republican named Kent Williams, is a heretic and no longer deserves to be affiliated with party of Lincoln. The party's executive committee affirmed the political disbarment, throwing Tennessee politics out of equilibrium.
Republicans won a bare majority in the House; Williams had won the Speaker's job by negotiating with Democrats; he promised to be inclusive and says that the Republican Party will die out if it does not open the tent. Establishment Republicans in Tennessee were furious. They had one electoral goal -- to win a majority -- and Williams, by compromising with the hated opposition, by promising to legislate and govern, rather than to precipitate Republican hegemony, became an immediate outcast. (Horrors: he assigned the 49 members of the House just 46 offices to work in. And he gave six committee chairmanships to Democrats; seven went to Republicans.) Robin Smith, the GOP chair, notified Republicans this morning "of my decision to remove Kent Williams' status as a bona fide Republican."
The Tennessee GOP is one of the most conservative state parties in the country, and, as A.C. Kleinheider notes in his extensive coverage, its actions today herald in" a new Tennessee Republicanism, an ideological Republicanism" -- not the Republicanism of Lamar Alexander, Bill Frist, Bob Corker or Fred Thompson. Kent Williams is at the leading edge of a generation of Republican officeholders who are rejecting the ideological Republicanism of the past twenty years. These battles will be fought state-by-state, just as they're beginning to show up nationwide.
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/02/mr_republican_speaker_youre_not_a_republican_anymore.php?loc=interstitialskip
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