Both the Knoxville News Sentinel and the Maryville Daily Times have given coverage to some folks castigating Congressman John J. “Jimmy” Duncan for refusing to hold a special town hall meeting – – – just for them. Naturally, after being told no, some of them are immediately intending to take to the streets to demonstrate. Duncan politely declined the invitation to extend a town hall for the folks demanding it, while stating far too many of those meetings degenerate into “shouting opportunities for extremists, kooks and radicals.” Jimmy Duncan is exactly right.
The complainant is Sarah Herron, founder of something called “Indivisible East Tennessee.” The Indivisible East Tennessee organization is part and parcel of a larger movement, which according to the Daily Times, exists “to prevent Trump from using his congressional majority to reshape America in his own racist, authoritarian, and corrupt image.” For those of you who voted for Donald Trump – – -and the vast majority of East Tennesseans did – – – you may begin to grasp what these folks think of you. In short, the entire point of Indivisible East Tennessee is to resist the Trump presidency, as these folks clearly prefer Barack Obama’s “pen and a phone” rule. Again, according to the Maryville Daily Times, the Indivisible East Tennessee people used a guidebook penned by congressional staffers (and you can bet they weren’t Republican staffers) who wrote, “If a small minority in the Tea Party can stop President Obama, then we the majority can stop a petty tyrant named Trump.”
What majority? Subtract the vote from Los Angeles and New York counties and Trump won the popular vote. Add Jill Stein’s total to Hillary Clinton’s vote and Gary Johnson’s votes to Trump’s and Trump won the popular vote. There is not a Libertarian in the country who voted for more government. As for majorities in East Tennessee, let’s look at the vote totals from the counties comprising Congressman Jimmy Duncan’s district: In Blount County, Trump received 37,443 votes to 12,100 for Hillary Clinton; in Campbell County Trump got 9,870 votes to 2,248 for Clinton; in Claiborne County Trump received 8,602 votes while Clinton got 1,832 votes; in Grainger County Trump tallied 6,626 votes while Clinton won 1,154 votes; in Jefferson County Trump carried 14,776 votes to 3,494 votes for Clinton; in Knox County Trump won 105,767 votes to Clinton’s 62,878 votes; in Loudon County Trump got 17,610 votes to 4,919 votes for Hillary Clinton.
East Tennessee is comprised of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Congressional districts and Donald Trump handily carried each of them in the 2016 election. Indivisible they might believe themselves to be, but around here they are less numerous than grasshoppers in a field full of hungry turkeys.
These folks are self-described “progressives,” meaning leftists. When not participating in marches wearing odd hats on their heads and complaining about having lost the last election, they are trying to undo the election results. Jimmy Duncan wrote, “I have never seen so many sore losers as there are today” and that’s what this all comes down to: sore losers. These folks complain about form letters from congressmen and staff members registering their telephone calls, while admitting they contact Congressional offices using a script provided by the same staffers who wrote their guidebook.
Jimmy Duncan’s stand on the issues is hardly a mystery to anybody who can read, talk or think. The fact is Duncan is right: a group of extremists, kooks and radicals want a town hall meeting precisely because they want to scream and squall and get attention. Duncan simply had the good sense to refuse to give them a forum to draw attention to themselves and their own agenda.
Now these leftists have announced they are sponsoring “Kookfest” and protesting at Congressman Duncan’s office here in Knoxville. Most of these same people who decry bullying are doing exactly that. They decry President Trump as an “authoritarian” when people holding precisely the same views set fire to Berkeley, California to keep a conservative speaker from speaking. They frequently cite “hate” as a reason for keeping other folks from being able to speak publicly, yet are clearly full of hate themselves. It’s just more of the same old leftist hypocrisy. These people don’t believe in freedom, business, individual liberty or much of anything else aside from a nanny state. They believe government can do most everything better, including managing our lives for us.
These people are so eager to claim Donald Trump’s presidency a failure that they want to make sure he cannot govern from the very beginning. For anyone paying the slightest attention to the news, it’s simply more of the same, leftists running around with their hair on fire and being outraged.
Jimmy Duncan represented the vast majority of his constituency when he said no. It was a far more polite response than a lot of people would have given them.
