Tomorrow, Republicans in Alabama will choose a conservative to replace a conservative in Congress, but will their choice drive with the GOP establishment or “Cruz” with tea partiers?
Yes, we know that Tuesday’s election is merely the GOP’s primary run-off between Bradley Byrne and Dean Young, the winner of which will most likely face a yet-to-be-chosen Democrat in the December 17 special election to replace Jo Bonnor, who resigned his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives to accept a position with the University of Alabama.
But this is the Heart of Dixie and its First Congressional District is not the singular, squiggly-gerrymandered variety present in all states of the Deep South that exalts racial-identity politics over representation of one’s actual economic and social interests.
The first new listener to be seated within earshot of House Speaker John Boehner since the McCain-McConnell GOP-establishment gang (think Clantons) “won” the Government Shutdown-Shootout (at the Senate GOP Corral against Doc Ted Cruz Holliday and Mike Lee tea partier-Earps) thus dashing Americans’ hopes of relief from Obamacare anytime soon, will have an “R” beside his name.
This latest conservative-corral fight was not OK with most Republicans, as viewed from this South Carolina gamecock’s roost atop Stone Mountain of Georgia given, not only defections to healthcare-rustlers President Barack Hussein Obama and Democrat Majority Leader Dingy Harry Reid in the Senate, but also by a majority of members of the House. So when the establishment favorite in Alabama defines the race thusly, this rooster isn’t moved:
Byrne, a former state senator and member of the Alabama Board of Education, recalled offering immediate support for Gov. Robert Bentley after a hard-fought GOP primary in 2010.
“I’m a conservative Republican. He (Young) won’t even say he will vote for the Republican nominee in the general election. That’s not a Republican,” he said. “When I lost to Robert Bentley in 2010, the night I lost, I endorsed him. And again publicly, several more times.”
Party loyalty alone won’t even get you a lousy t-shirt, with either an elephant or war eagle impressed upon it, much less change laws that are hurting the American people. In fact, I just took a dollar bill, a case quarter and my RNC membership card to Starbucks and couldn’t even get a cup of taxed coffee, but I digress.
So we sought out our astute political observer west of the Chattahoochee, east of the Pecos and south of I-10 that we consult on all things political, state, local and Republican; who informs us that:
Dean Young, who garnered 23% of the vote against Byrne’s 34.6% in the initial September 24th GOP primary, has private sector achievements as a real estate entrepreneur, was a senior aide to Judge Roy ‘Ten Commandments’ Moore and fought against tax increases sought by the Orange Beach Zoning Commission. Young lost a bid to un-seat Jo Bonner from the seat in 2012.
Bradley Byrne, a lawyer in Mobile for more than three decades, was elected to the State Senate and was appointed by the Alabama State Board of Education as Chancellor of the Alabama Department of Post-secondary Education, to serve as the chief executive officer of Alabama’s two-year college system. He ran unsuccessfully for Governor in 2010. Bradley’s grandfather was elected Sheriff of Mobile County in 1926, notably running as the candidate of sweeping reforms in a campaign against “The Ring,” the corrupt cabal that then ruled Mobile public life.
Chances are that neither of these obvious conservatives would have abandoned Cruz to cave to Obama’s demand for a “clean” CR, but that Byrne chooses as his preferred mud to sling that he beat the last opponent that beat him to the endorsement-microphone moves us to favor the Young gun in Mobile.
Mike DeVine‘s Right.com @ Joe For America.com
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
