Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
CROM CARMICHAEL:
Michael, I was listening to Lonnie and you on the way in, and he was reminiscing about the good old days in Tennessee when people were nice to each other politically. And Lonnie, he has a memory that is not as good as mine because he’s not as old as I am. I would trade places on age, but I can’t.
But so I can tell you what life was really like here in Tennessee in the good old days when the Democrats controlled the House, the Senate, and then when they also had the governor’s office, they spent a good bit of time for 15 years trying to figure out how to impose an income tax on the people of Tennessee, even though the Constitution of Tennessee forbids an income tax.
They didn’t much care about that. The media was 100 percent behind them so they could pretty much do what they wanted to. We had terrible tort laws. The Democrats passed Obamacare, which was an unmitigated disaster.
Tennessee turned out to be the pharmaceutical drug capital of the world. There were two times as many scripts issued in Tennessee, two times as many scripts issued in Tennessee as the second highest state in the country on a per capita basis because of Tenn Care. We were the opioid capital of the world.
And we had terrible workman’s comp. We had terrible schools, and the teachers’ unions were all powerful under Jimmy Naifeh. Now, it is true that Jimmy Naifeh was kind, he was nice because if you crossed him, he would crush you.
That’s the way the Democrat Party operated. Jimmy Naifeh operated just like Nancy Pelosi. And he was honest, but he was a mean person. He could be very hard on you. And so, let’s fast forward. Were the Republicans were they sensible at that time? Were they aggressive? Were they doing what the Democrats are doing now?
Were they protesting? Were they jumping in people’s faces and screaming and yelling? And in the legislature, the answer is no. They did not do any of those things. They tried to work with the opposition. They tried to get some things passed. When Lamar Alexander was governor, passed and it was a paradigm pass and that was when they put in a gasoline and diesel tax and cordoned it off for roads and bridges so that we paid cash for roads and bridges. But remember, that was a tax.
Democrats love taxes. So the compromise there was the tax would only be used for one specific purpose and that was a good thing. But then we had Don Sundquist become governor, and Don Sundquist then worked with the Democrats completely surreptitiously trying to get an income tax passed, and he failed. Thank goodness for the Phil Valentines of this world and Steve Gill, and a number of other talk show hosts.
Dave Ramsey actually was just getting started back then, and to his great credit, he participated in fighting against an income tax. And Tennessee is much better off. Because the income tax failed and our financing of the state is much more secure because we don’t have an income tax.
And then Republicans did finally get in charge, and we passed another constitutional amendment that made the fact that an income tax would not be constitutional. We did that when we were in charge. We had tort reform under Republicans. We had workman’s comp reform.
We now have educational reform. And to Phil Bredesen’s great credit, when he was governor, he fixed Tenn Care. But he did it with a Republican legislature. I may be wrong on that, but he did fix it. He did fix it. And so to his credit, he did that. But the 90s that Lonnie was talking about were because Republicans had good manners.
It’s the Democrats who had bad manners. It’s solely on one party. You have Republicans doing nothing right now to cause the nasty behavior that is going on at the State House. And the Republicans who are in charge ought to know that because of the great work that you did in uncovering the audio where it appears that there were people who were pushing for violent protests at the legislature. And we know the names of the people who were pushing those.
This should be just like exactly like the Proud Boys. If there are violent protests, then the people who push those protests, and we have their names, should be arrested, and they should be tried. And if convicted, they should serve time in prison because we do have to calm things down.
We do have to respect each other, but we also have to respect elections. And if you don’t like the way the elections are going, then you need to raise money voluntarily. You need to get good candidates and good policies, and if you can’t win, then that’s the way it goes.
And that’s the way the Republicans acted when they didn’t have power. They did the best they could, but they were always, they always had good manners. The Democrats need to take a page out of that book, and even though they’re in the minority, they need to have good manners. And these protestors, if they want to act violently and spit on legislatures, ought to have an opportunity to spend a lot of time with each other in prison. And there you are.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this Crommentary:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “U.S. Capitol” by Thomas Lin.
