Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, said Americans should expect to see a “new golden age” of the nation under former and president-elect Donald Trump during his incoming second term in the White House.
Read the full story
Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, said 15 years after the Tax Day Tea Party, the movement’s effect on fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets in federal politics has been “an abject failure.”
“The Tea Party movement was an abject failure. There’s just no other way to put it. Look at where we are today. When the Tea Party movement started, it was triggered by Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package. Today, that’s a rounding error. The deficit was $10 billion when Obama took over in January 2009. Today, it’s $34 trillion. It’s going up by a trillion dollars every hundred days, and that rate is accelerating,” Phillips explained on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Read the full story
In 2020, the United States was a net energy exporter. The US had produced more energy than it needed domestically. America is now at the mercy of foreign and hostile powers for the energy America needs.
Imagine for a moment if that were true for food.
Read the full story
It is obvious the presidential drama is not going to be resolved until early December. There will be litigation and recounts and the real possibility that this election ends up in the Supreme Court.
The Democrats are trying to steal the election. It is blatant and they aren’t even trying to hide it. Ballots are being discovered late in important states where Democrats hold the governor’s office. Amazingly, these ballots are all seeming to break for Biden. In Pennsylvania and in Michigan, Republican poll watchers are being ejected or denied entry to observe the count.
Read the full story
Free speech is dead in this country.
It isn’t just the First Amendment. That only applies to government action to restrict speech. All forms of free speech are dead or dying.
Read the full story
Conservatives are looking at the 2020 elections and make a couple of assumptions. Without any dishonesty in the election process, President Trump will win a historic victory. The second assumption is they Democrats are going to try and steal the election and if they can’t, they will use the chaos from the attempt to tie the President down in his second term.
Read the full story
2020 has been one hell of a year for Nashville. It started with a tornado, then the coronavirus, then mayor John Cooper and his insane lock down of the city, the 34% tax hike he and the metro council rammed through, and now he is single handedly trying to destroy the downtown Nashville tourist economy.
Read the full story
We need to remind everyone, “It’s the economy, stupid”
Read the full story
The first quarter of the year is not yet over, and we have gone from an almost record stock market to a nation that is all but economically shut down. Some alarmists warn that over two million Americans will die from the Chinese Virus. Others say this will be less problematic than the flu.
Regardless, as of now, the country is mostly shutdown and the economy is in free fall. Economists from Goldman Sachs predict that the economy will shrink by an unprecedented twenty four percent in the second quarter. The good news is the economy is expected to grow by twelve percent and ten percent in the third and fourth quarters.
Read the full story
The Democrat Party may not remember the old adage about being careful what you wish for, but they are about to get a real lesson in what that proverb means.
Read the full story
2020 is bringing great opportunity for the nation and for Tennessee. We have the chance to reelect President Trump. We have the chance to keep the Senate in Republican hands and to take back control of the House of Representatives.
Read the full story
You can reflexively oppose anything the left supports and almost never to worry about being wrong. Unfortunately, many conservatives have fallen for the shiny object that is being dangled in front of them by the left called, “criminal justice reform.”
The American criminal justice system is not perfect and like any other system, there are always improvements and corrections that can be made. Unfortunately, most of the reforms the left is suggesting make things worse, not better.
Read the full story
The 2020 question no one in Tennessee is asking.
Read the full story
by Judson Phillips 2020 and the gentle art of herding cats If there was ever an appropriate metaphor for getting conservatives to work together, it is herding cats. For 2020, conservatives are going to have to herd their cats or do whatever it takes to win. 2020 is the Flight 93 election part two. For this election, for conservatives, there are three goals. They are not negotiable and in the immortal words of the movie Apollo 13, “Failure is not an option.” First, conservatives must make certain that President Trump is reelected. Second, the Senate must be held and third, the House of Representatives must be retaken. None of those goals are really optional and if conservatives fail in either of the first two, it will be a disaster. For three years, Democrats have tried to undo the results of the 2016 election. What would they do if they took the White House, now that the Party is controlled by the Bolshevik Bernie wing? Losing the Senate would put a complete stop to one of President Trump’s greatest successes. That is the remaking of the Federal Judiciary. To keep the Senate, conservatives are going to have to do something…
Read the full story
Fiscal conservatives and free market advocates are calling out U.S. Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee for his new health care legislation they say is almost as bad as something Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would push.
Read the full story
by Judson Phillips In the age of Trump, something has become obvious. The news media is the enemy of conservatives. Across Tennessee and the nation, we see the liberal media attack conservatives with the single objective of destroying the conservative. Why shouldn’t the left wing media attack conservatives? After all, conservatives are the worst in managing media created crises. Any conservative who is involved in politics is subject to a media witch hunt. Any conservative out there must understand the rules. Rule 1. They are the enemy. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit likes to say, “if you just think of them as Democrat activists with a byline, you won’t go wrong.” The quotable Jim Treacher famously said in 2014, “Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.” The corollary is modern journalism is all about finding facts or at least allegations that they want to tell the public about because they will reflect badly on conservatives. Understand, when the media calls, they want to make a conservative look bad. Rule 2. You have the right to remain silent. The question is, do you have the ability? When the media…
Read the full story
by Judson Phillips Bill Lee is now the Governor of Tennessee. I did not support Bill Lee in the primary. That does not matter, as Lee beat Congressman Diane Black, Randy Boyd and then Tennessee House Speaker Beth Harwell. Lee also crushed Karl Dean in the General Election. Conservatives were elated. Conservatives had mostly rallied around Bill Lee early in the campaign. Lee’s campaign focused much on his Christian faith and the tragedy surrounding the death of his first wife. His campaign was long on story and short on specifics. His “Ten for Tennessee” was a mostly aspirational platform, lacking almost totally in specifics. For Tennessee conservatives, Bill Lee was a dream come true. Conservatives were tired and disheartened after eight years of a very liberal Bill Haslam administration. After watching a conservative agenda die for eight years and watching government grow at the same rate that Democrats would have grown government, conservatives were excited about Bill Lee. He was a handsome, charismatic candidate who was one of them. For many conservatives, election night was the highwater mark. Lee drubbed Dean and that election was never in doubt. But then, things changed. Soon after the election, “Ten for Tennessee,”…
Read the full story
On Tuesday, Megan Barry resigned as Nashville’s mayor. But before she announced her resignation, she made a trip to criminal court. What happened there? Here is what WKRN said about it: Nashville Mayor Megan Barry pleaded guilty in Davidson County court to felony theft charges Tuesday morning. One condition of her plea agreement was to resign from the office of mayor. Barry pleaded guilty to felony theft of property over $10,000 charges. It is a conditional plea agreement for which Barry will receive three years unsupervised probation. She also must pay $11,000 in restitution and if she follows her plea agreement for next three years, the charges can be dismissed and expunged. In plain, non-lawyer English, Megan Barry walked into the courtroom never having been convicted of a felony. When she left, she still was not a convicted felon. Barry entered a plea under Tennessee’s judicial diversion statute, Tennessee Code Annotated 40-35-313. This is often referred to as a conditional guilty plea. In this type of case, the defendant makes a conditional plea but the judge does not enter the judgment (the legal instrument that convicts someone). The person then serves a period of probation and if they successfully complete…
Read the full story
by Judson Phillips Conservatives and Republicans have just gotten a wakeup call. The problem is, no one is paying attention. In Texas, a new record has been set for early voting in a non-Presidential election. Who is turning out these votes? It is the Democrats, not the Republicans. Democrats, across the nation, are turning out in record numbers, while conservatives and Republicans are staying home. If conservatives and Republicans don’t get off their collective backsides and get involved now, this fall will be a disaster of biblical proportions. The Republicans should hold the Senate. The Democrats have 24 seats they are defending, including 10 in states carried by President Trump. The Republicans are only defending 8. At least four of the Democrat seats are rated as tossups and only one Republican seat. The House is much more problematic. The Republicans have a 25 seat majority in the House but the Democrats are putting on a full court press. Where are the Republicans? The Republicans are playing safe ball, just trying to keep their majority. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who pulled off what most people considered impossible in 1994 and gave the GOP its first majority in the House in…
Read the full story
One of the issues I have worked on for several years has been IRS abuse. The attitude and actions of the Internal Revenue Service towards conservatives has been nothing short of shocking. IRS employees gave 94% of their political contributions to Hillary Clinton. IRS workers were busted for telling people to vote for Barack Obama. Lois Lerner, the infamous former IRS executive, targeted conservative and Tea Party groups. Lerner and her ilk did not simply delay non-profit approval for these groups. Conservatives and conservative groups were targeted for auditing and worse. In 2014, every 501(C)(4) group that was audited by the IRS was a conservative group. What a lot of people do not know is that when the IRS scandal broke in 2013, Lerner and Obama appointees from the Department of Justice were conspiring to prosecute conservatives for the crime of being conservative. All of this leads to something called Schedule B and Diane Black. Schedule B is an addendum that has to be filed by non-profit groups, listing their donors. Left wing groups and left wing Attorneys General want these documents. Why? Because with a donor list, they can harass the donors for conservative organizations and some of these…
Read the full story
by Judson Phillips On Wednesday evening, the rumors that had been percolating through downtown Nashville all day were finally shown to be true. Nashville Mayor Megan Barry admitted that she had an extramarital affair. But it was not just any extramarital affair. She was having an affair with a Nashville employee who was paid to protect her. Metro police sergeant Rob Forrest was assigned to protect the Mayor and traveled with her extensively. According to media reports, Barry traveled with Forrest at least nine times alone. According to other media reports, in the last two years alone, Forrest made $135,000 in overtime. That overtime is in addition to his regular salary and for the trips he took with the Mayor on the taxpayer’s dime. Neither Barry or Forrest are giving details, such as the time frame of the affair, presumably on the advice of their lawyers. Until there is evidence to the contrary, sane people have to assume they were having their affair while he was on duty and they were traveling together. Megan Barry used tax dollars to help pay for her affair. And she had that affair with someone who works for the city. All of this…
Read the full story
by Judson Phillips Earlier this week, Mark West of the Chattanooga Tea Party shocked a lot of people in Tennessee when he came out and endorsed Diane Black to be the next governor of Tennessee. Mark’s endorsement of the four-term Congressman flies in the face of the perception that the Tea Party is solidly behind former State Senator Mae Beavers. (Writer’s note: Neither I nor my group, Tea Party Nation, have yet to endorse a candidate in the governor’s race). Many Tea Party activists and groups are solidly behind Mae Beavers, but as Mark West just proved, that support is not unanimous. Tennessee activists on social media erupted after word of Mark’s endorsement spread. Many people who are active in the conservative and Tea Party movement in Tennessee were openly critical of him. Others, more disturbingly, opined that the Tea Party did not support Diane Black and Mark essentially had no right to disagree with the majority. That latter sentiment is extremely disturbing. The Tea Party movement is a movement that is centered on the concepts of freedom and liberty. One of the most fundamental aspects of liberty is the right to make up your own mind. If the…
Read the full story
ANALYSIS/OPINION: At the Value Voters Summit last week, former Trump adviser and Breitbart Chairman Steve Bannon announced the obvious. “Right now, it’s a season of war on the GOP establishment,” he told the conservative base. For conservatives, this war is not Mr. Bannon’s war. It is everyone’s war. Contrary to what the media and the Republican…
Read the full story
ANALYSIS/OPINION: The first skirmishes of a second American civil war have begun. No, this is not a metaphorical analogy to that bloody conflict that killed approximately 620,000 Americans. It is an objective statement of the reality in America. Since the election of 2016, the left has gone crazy. Their version of the Tea Party is called…
Read the full story
There are at least seven reasons why the Vanderbilt Poll-Tennessee released on Tuesday by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, co-directed by Vanderbilt Professor John Geer, is fatally flawed. Those flaws come as no surprise to conservatives across the state. “The Vanderbilt Poll has notoriously leaned left for many years in the eyes of most Tennessee conservatives,” The Tennessee Star reported on an earlier Vanderbilt Poll released back in April, and the latest poll is no different, local conservatives say. Among its counter-intuitive findings was this cleverly worded claim: Support for a path to citizenship for undocumented employees is the highest it has been since the poll’s inception: up to 56 percent. And that figure is not just driven by Democrats—40 percent of Republicans favor it too. An additional 20 percent favor the establishment of a guest worker program. Even stronger is support for helping teens of undocumented parents raised in Tennessee and who attend a Tennessee public university. Two-thirds of Tennesseans say they deserve to be eligible for in-state tuition at public colleges. “It is very obvious that Vanderbilt had the result they wanted and polled until they got it,” Tennessee conservative activist Judson Phillips, Founder of…
Read the full story
FRANKLIN, TENNESSEE (Tuesday, May 23) — Today The Tennessee Star announced its online news site has had ONE MILLION visits since its launch February 6. “The Tennessee Star is the only consistently conservative media outlet in the state of Tennessee. This is a conservative state, and Tennesseans have wanted a fact-based news site with a conservative perspective for many years. That’s what we offer, and that’s why we’ve seen such tremendous traffic,” said Managing Editor Christina Botteri. “People are smart and they want to be informed and not preached at or dictated to, and I believe that is a big part of why we are growing at such a substantial rate – especially compared to other area news outlets,” she said. Judson Phillips, a long-time conservative activist and Tea Party Nation founder agreed. “I am not shocked at the excellent performance of The Tennessee Star. While the Gannett-owned papers read like newsletters for the Tennessee Democrat Party, The Star goes after important stories that the liberal media will not touch,” Phillips said. While the raw viewership of The Tennessee Star is remarkable, media experts also recognize the impact and influence the upstart news outlet is already having at Legislative Plaza. “Attracting one…
Read the full story
It is time to break up Tennessee’s large cities. Anyone with three functioning brain cells realizes the Tennessee Republican Party is not a conservative party and the Tennessee State legislature is a body that is of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists and for the lobbyists. The Tennessee legislature will occasionally throw something out that is red meat for the Republican base, but for the most part they act like moderate Democrats. After all, without the Republicans in the state legislature, who would we have to expand government and raise taxes? Conservatives need to start pressing the legislature to make some real small government reforms. One of the best reforms that could be made is to start breaking up Tennessee’s largest cities. This process has started with State Senator Bo Watson’s “De Annexation” bill, which passed the Senate this year and will be considered by the House next year. Tennessee’s four largest cities have Democrat mayors. Memphis is well on its way to putting Detroit to shame as a murder capital and as the city most likely to end up in bankruptcy. Nashville, while a safer city, has had a series of mayors who put Music City on the way to…
Read the full story
RIP Tennessee Republican Party. The Tennessee Republican Party died on April 19, 2017. Ten years after the GOP became the majority party in Tennessee, led by a liberal governor, the party committed political suicide. By voting for the largest tax increase in the history of the state of Tennessee, the Republicans in the state legislature knifed their base in the back and repudiated everything they claim to stand for. Tennessee Republicans routinely make campaign speeches talking about how conservative they are and how they believe in limited government. Today, Tennessee’s conservative base knows this is a lie. Despite that, these same politicians will return home and tell the local people how conservative they are. Clearly these politicians think that the people who make up base are idiots. After all, they seriously think they can name the largest tax increase in the history of the state, the “Tax Cut Act of 2017” and expect the base to believe them. Unfortunately, the Tennessee Republicans supermajority in the legislature chose to listen to a lame duck, feckless crap weasel governor instead of the people who put them in office. Since the Tennessee Republicans did not listen to their base, it is time…
Read the full story
A new Vanderbilt Poll confirms what most Tennesseans have known for years: Nashville is a far left island of Democratic blue surrounded by a sea of conservative Republican red. The majority of those surveyed in Davidson County (Nashville) disapprove of President Trump, including 51 percent of white voters. Disapproval among black and Hispanic respondents tops more than 70 percent. President Trump crushed Hillary Clinton in Tennessee in the November 2016 general election, winning the state’s eleven electoral college votes in a 61 percent to 35 percent blowout over the former Secretary of State. In Davidson County (Nashville), it was an entirely different matter. Hillary Clinton defeated President Trump in the urban center of Middle Tennessee by a 60 percent to 34 percent margin. “When you’re polling registered voters rather than likely voters, your results are going to skew left because you are polling a lot of people who are not informed and engaged enough to actually vote,” former Nashville radio talk show host and media consultant Steve Gill tells The Tennessee Star. “Taking that into account, the Vanderbilt Poll essentially reflects the election day results,” he adds. “The Vanderbilt Poll has spent a lot of money to confirm what most everybody…
Read the full story
Gas tax increase supporters initially believed they had scored a great political coup on Monday when Washington insider Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), declared his support for the amended version of Gov. Haslam’s IMPROVE Act that passed the Senate Transportation Committee last week. That amended version reduced the proposed gas tax increase from 7 cents per gallon to 6 cents per gallon. But the fierce backlash from conservative opponents of the gas tax increase in Tennessee to the last minute attempt by supporters of the governor’s plan to bolster its chances by calling in a “celebrity ” who has never lived in the state and knows little of the intricacies of the bill or the state’s budget, spells more, rather than less, political trouble ahead for the governor and his allies. “The recent amendments made by the Senate, and supported by Gov. Haslam, have improved the bill to the extent that the bill is now a net tax decrease, and thus not a violation of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge…ATR scores the amended version of SB 1221 / HB 534 as a net tax cut and therefore Taxpayer Protection Pledge compliant,” Norquist wrote “in a memorandum to…
Read the full story
For some, Tuesday, Feb 28 might be just another National Chocolate Soufflé Day, but to the Williamson County Republican Party loyalists, it’s time to pick a new GOP Chair. The election in 2015 of outgoing Chairwoman Julie Hannah was a great victory for the conservative grassroots. Of the two candidates running to replace her, many activists believe Debbie Deaver represents a continuation of Hannah’s high-energy, principled leadership. Party insiders agree the choice between the two candidates emerging from the Willamson County GOP Convention earlier this year is stark: Establishment-supporting, Moderate Tom Miller, or conservative crackerjack, Deaver. Miller served as a Franklin alderman-at-large from 1997-2003, then was elected the Mayor of Franklin for a single term in 2003. However, although Miller enjoys a nearly ubiquitous reputation as a “nice guy,” some Republican activists fear the longtime Realtor and Franklin resident will “do nothing” but take orders from the Establishment Party Leaders in Tennessee like Governor Bill Haslam, and Senators Bob Corker and Llamar Alexander. “If Tom Miller is elected to the Williamson County Chair, we will go from being a strong conservative party organization, to simply being a big-government, liberal tax-and-spend organization,” said activist and Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips.…
Read the full story