The list of prominent Tennessee Republicans repudiating their own state party continues to grow this evening. Yesterday, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) joined Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain in explicitly rejecting the TN Republican party’s tactics in attacking Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn and Sen. Bob Corker have condemned the message from their own party spokesman, Bill Hobbs. Meanwhile,  Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey and Republican Minority Leader Jason Mumpower don’t see what the big fuss is all about and believe the state party is doing a great job representing their values.

The inappropriate press release titled “Anti-Semites for Obama” was issued by TN Republican Party Spokesman Bill Hobbs on Monday. It included an image of Obama wearing a turban, referred to him repeatedly as “Barack Hussein Obama” and charged that Obama surrounds himself with anti-Semitic supporters, including Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan. The release hammered a self-destructive wedge between Republican party moderates who support John McCain and the party’s bitter Christian conservative base, many of whom delivered Tennessee for Mike Huckabee in the Republican primary.

Sen. Alexander’s statement yesterday said Tennessee Republican Party Chair Robin Smith “is removing the release and the photo from the website.” Smith, however, spent the day defending the post in various media outlets and did not remove the release. Smith went so far as to refer reporters to Obama’s dead mother as to why Hobbs used Obama’s middle name.

WKRN blogger Adam Kleinheider gave Hobbs an extended opportunity today to explain why the press release was still on the state party website. Hobbs instead refuted Alexander’s statement claiming there was no agreement to remove the release. After seeking reaction from Sen. Alexander’s office, the release quickly disappeared from the state party website.

In a span of 24 hours, both Robin Smith and Bill Hobbs went from launching a widely condemned smear campaign against Barack Obama to bizarre backpedalling clarifications, open insubordination to senior party officials, and total message implosion under still more pressure from prominent state Republicans.

This isn’t the first online posting that has gotten Bill Hobbs into trouble. In 2006, Hobbs abruptly left his job at a Nashville-based Christian university after authoring an anti-Muslim post inviting readers to join him in denigrating Islam. Hobbs was then hired in October 2007 as the spokesman for the Tennessee Republican Party. Whether it was to continue waging a radically divisive agenda on behalf of state Republicans remains to be seen.

This match of Wii Tennis between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is a real nail-biter to the very end.
Vince plays Hillary. I play Barack.

The former leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, praised Barack Obama yesterday comparing him to Nation of Islam founder Fard Muhammad.

“A black man with a white mother became a savior to us,” Farrakhan said. ”A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall.” Farrakhan told the 20,000 gathered for the Nation of Islam Saviours’ Day they should vote “their own self-interest.”

Here’s a chopped up video clip. If you find a better video clip, let me know.

UPDATE 3:39pm - I came across this interesting connection between Louis Farrakhan and Barack Obama. It makes me wonder what Obama thinks about Farrakhan.

Barack Obama is a member of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama’s spiritual adviser, is the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright’s daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said “truly epitomized greatness.” That man is Louis Farrakhan.
[Obama’s Farrakhan Test - WashingtonPost - 01-15-08]

UPDATE 3:48pm - Obama’s reaction to the paragraph above. Farrakhan has a much stronger relationship with Obama’s spiritual advisor than he does with Obama.

“I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan,” Obama said in the statement. ”I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.”
[Race, Anti-Semitism and a Campaign - MSNBC - 01-15-08]

Hillary Clinton gives me the creeps some times. She doesn’t always connect with a crowd. She can have that bossy presence that can make you feel like you should be looking busier than you really are. Some people say she’s a bitch and that she sounds like she’s angling for a fight in every policy discussion.

But you know what? “Bitches get stuff done.”* The more I think of it, the more I think I like that about Hillary.

In 2000 and 2004, America listened carefully to Gore, Kerry and Bush and decided against the boring, patrician policy wonks. A slight majority of Americans fell in love with Bush’s rhetoric and grew to despise the straw men it defeated. That’s how rhetoric works, and we’ll all pay that bill on top of the mortgage for another 20 to 30 years.

One of the lasting images I have of Al Gore during the 2000 presidential election was his repetitive sighing in response to George W. Bush’s rhetorical responses to Gore’s policy proposals. ”He’s using fuzzy math,” Bush loved to say to the delight of crowds. We now know that’s Bush’s special way of describing real math, just like saying someone is doing a “heck of a job” is his special warning that someone is about to screw things up so bad that a lot of Americans will die.

Each of Al Gore’s sighs was to me a white flag of intellectual defeat to the kind of rhetoric America was desperate to hear. If Gore wouldn’t fight in a debate for what he believed, would he fight for it as President of the United States? America said, “no.” In 2004, John Kerry and John McCain’s herosim was swift boated by George Bush’s something or another. Whatever it was, about half of America that bothered to vote loved it.

But that’s all water under the bridge.

In the past few days, a different side of Hillary Clinton started flickering through the news channel above. In Thursday’s debate, Clinton continued to focus on health care differences between the candidates to the dismay of moderators and showed an emotional side when she spoke of what motivates her to fight. Yesterday, Clinton sought to publicly shame Obama for a mailer she said was “blatantly false.”

“Today in the crowd I was given two mailings that Senator Obama’s campaign is mailing out, and I have to express my deep disappointment that he is continuing to send false and discredited mailings with information that is not true to the voters of Ohio. He says one thing in speeches, and then he turns around and does this. And we have consistently called him on it. It has been discredited. It is blatantly false, yet he continues to spend millions of dollars perpetuating falsehoods. That is not the new politics that the speeches are about. It is not hopeful. It is destructive. Particularly for a Democrat to be discrediting universal healthcare by waging a false campaign against my plan.”
[Hillary Clinton - Obama mailing is ‘desctructive’ - 02-23-08]

* This Saturday was SNL’s first return to live TV after the writers’ strike. Comedian and writer Tina Fey pretty much sums up what seems to be a different mood in the days leading up to primaries in TX, OH and RI: ”Bitch is the new black.”

Mimi and Trudy watch me tweet on the Twittertubes.

At the end of tonight’s Democratic presidential debate at the University of Texas in Austin, both candidates were presented with the following by CNN’s Campbell Brown:

“A leader’s judgment is most tested at times of crisis. I’m wondering if both of you will describe what was the moment that tested you the most, that moment of crisis.”

Watch this video as Senator Barack Obama focuses on his personal challenges as a child of a single mother and later as an adult taking responsibility for the choices he made. Hillary Clinton’s response draws a standing ovation as she almost tears up placing the focus not on her own life challenges, but on the American heros who are giving their life and limb to serve our country.

Who is ready to lead?