AWESOME! The County Chairmen, their officers, and SEC Members have been great to work with over the last several months in fielding great candidates, holding special conventions for county vacancies, and hosting fabulous Lincoln Day and Reagan Day Dinners all the while.

Be sure to check the TRP calendar (which has been reformatted for ease of use) to see the numerous grassroots events and opportunities to meet the great leadership and candidates that keep our Party strong. Again, thank you for all you do!

MCCAIN’S MARCH TO THE WHITE HOUSE

Consistent “Change”

The buzz word of this election year has been “change.” While it’s easy to play election-year politics with promises and high-minded platitudes, John McCain has been very consistent in his message of changing the way our tax money is spent in Washington, D.C. Watch this flashback recorded last year in Memphis. Change, but consistent!

Also, Watch John McCain’s new TV ad.

Go to www.JohnMcCain.com to volunteer, donate and get informed!

Tennessee Republicans are committed to Transparency in Government. This week, Republicans introduced legislation that will permit access to “a free, easy-to-use, searchable website that would allow users to instantly explore state government revenue and expenditures in detail.”

Following the “votes-for-cash” scandal, the Tennessee Waltz, and a revenue shortfall, Tennesseans deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent.

Watch the video and read the release

One day after Tennessee Republican legislators unveiled a proposed website to increase public access to the state spending, Democrat Phil Bredesen has been sued for ignoring a public records request for nine months. Bredesen, leader of the Tennessee Democrat Party who will be raising money and asking that Democrat legislators receive our votes and support during this upcoming year, has a distinct and repeated pattern of stonewalling requests for information and handling administrative issues.

Recently, the Tennessee Republican Party made a request for video from the state to be told it could cost “hundreds, maybe even thousands” of dollars to get a copy of the video, although millions of YouTube users know it costs nothing to download video to a computer via a USB cable. Now, the non-partisan Tennessee Center for Policy Research is forced to sue the Bredesen administration to honor its public records request made nine months earlier to the Department of Finance and Administration.

Tennesseans will also remember in the past, the administration has shredded documents related to sexual harassment allegations against administration employees, and saw one of its departmental communications personnel order people in that department to refuse to talk to certain people because they were “partisan.” And the administration was ordered by a federal judge last year to allow a “forensics inspection” of the hard drives of the computers of dozens of top administration personnel – including the governor himself – to recover from the hard drives countless electronic documents the administration had allowed to be destroyed.

Contrast that with Republican-led efforts in the legislature to make government more transparent, not less, and to provide the public easier access to information rather than put up roadblocks.

This week, a group of Republican legislators introduced the Taxpayer Transparency in Government Act, which would create a website where anyone could track government revenue and spending in detail. Rep. Matthew Hill discusses the legislation on video at SolutionsTN.com. Republicans: fighting for open government.

Change is possible in Nashville this year…Vote Republican!

The Doom and Gloom Democrats are at it again, taking a small dip in the economy and pretending it’s the Second Great Depression, in order to convince voters to buy the “hope” they’re selling that’s really just the same ol’ liberal recipe of higher taxes, more government spending and more government regulation. But the truth is that while the economy has taken some hits recently, it’s not as bad as the Democrats will claim between now and election day. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, 2008 is nothing like 1929. Says the Journal

It’s not even close. The overwhelming majority of Americans today are not on the brink of economic catastrophe, and Democrats should not treat them as if they are. In 2006, the median income of working-age husband-wife couples (ages 25-59) was $73,765. Eighty percent of Americans over 40 own a home, and while foreclosure rates have hit historic highs, it’s still the case that relatively few homeowners are at risk of losing their homes over the next several years. Moreover, if the coming recession follows the same pattern of the last seven downturns since 1960, it will be relatively short and shallow. During past recessions, unemployment rose by about two percentage points, real GDP declined by a little less than 2%, and the average length of the downturn was a little less than 11 months.

Democrats want you to be pessimistic about the future so you’ll elect them to enact their liberal Big Government agenda. But, as the Journal puts it, Americans are naturally optimists and believers in the American Dream.

They believe success or failure is within their control. Eighty percent believe you can start out poor and become rich in America. And while they are anxious over the current economic downturn and the broad changes brought about by globalization, they do not see themselves as victims, and are not comforted by politicians who recite a litany of their anxieties.

While polls show most people think the economy is in poor shape, and they worry about facing economic problems, “only 15% think that it is at least somewhat likely that they could be laid off in the next year,” the Journal reports, adding, “Even in the most recent polls, over two-thirds of Americans describe their financial situation and standard of living as either good or excellent.”

Democrats dream of building a bigger government-run safety net, and they sell that dream as “economic security,” but Americans don’t look forward to falling into a safety net, they look forward with optimism and hope for their own success in their own future.

A poll by Democracy Corps last year found that 57 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that “government makes it harder for people to get ahead in life,” and almost as many – 54 percent - thought that “government mostly gets in the way of the economy and job growth.”

That’s why the Republican message of lower taxes and less government spending and freeing the natural entrepreneurial forces of the American people resonates with so many – it is based on optimism, hope and a reliance on the abilities and talents of the people. The same people who built the economy during the current record-long economic boom, now in its sixth year, are the people who can rebuild the economy in the places where it is troubled – but only if they are not saddled with higher taxes and more government spending and entitlement programs and more government debt.

It matters who governs.