The easternmost bit of Tennessee is east of Atlanta, the westernmost bit is west of New Orleans, and all of this horizontal state is the epicenter of 2018 politics. Its U.S. Senate race will reveal whether, for Republicans, fealty to the president is not only necessary but sufficient, and whether a seasoned, temperate Democrat can be palatable to voters who are distant from the left and right coasts of the country and of today’s politics.
If you cobbled together a Republican suited to this year in this state — Donald Trump won 92 of 95 counties when carrying the state by 26 points — the result would resemble Rep. Marsha Blackburn: female, feisty and pleased as Punch with the president. If you asked central casting to find a Democrat with a contrasting political temperament, you would get Phil Bredesen. He is as exciting as oatmeal, which is said to be better for us than bacon.
Pistol-packing Blackburn — a Smith & Wesson .38 is her preferred accoutrement — in 2009 co-sponsored a bill that would have required presidential candidates to prove they are “natural born” citizens, a propitiation of “birthers.” She promises to be a Trump stalwart, which is dandy if you think that congressional Republicans are insufficiently servile. Legislators in lockstep with the president might be — James Madison be damned — what most Tennesseans want.
It is what many congressional Republicans feel duty-bound to be: A Republican congressman (Florida’s Ted Yoho) said in defense of a fellow Republican, a committee chairman accused of excessive subservience to the president: “You have to keep in mind who he works for. He works for the president and answers to the president.” This team-loyalty-over-institutional-responsibility politics vitiates the separation of powers by reversing Madison’s objective: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.”
