More thoughts on the Governor's race

I exchanged emails with now former blogger, Right Minded, this weekend. I asked his opinion on voting third party - which I am likely to do. He laid out some thoughts, and gave permission for publication of them:

"As a rule, I don't vote third party, because, except for extremely rare situations, third party candidates have no shot of winning elections, especially a governor's race. I prefer to vote for the most conservative of the two major party candidates. That's usually the Republican. Haslem is not a true conservative. He strikes me as a Corker-type Republican. But I'll end up voting for him because he's more conservative than McWherter.

In Tennessee, it's actually more important to have conservative leadership in the General Assembly than the executive branch. That's because a governor's veto can be overridden with a simple majority in each chamber of the legislature. That makes our legislature more powerful than if it required a two-thirds majority to override a veto.

Remember this, though. We conservatives still feel stung by the last GOP governor. A guy named Don Sundquist, who was also a Corker-type Republican. Sundquist was a complete disgrace to the GOP and the democratic process overall. If you think Republicans are peeved over Kent Williams hijacking the Speaker's gavel last year, our anger at Sundquist was ten times that much.

With that in mind, I'd actually prefer to have a Bredesen-like Democrat instead of a Haslam-like Republican IF the legislature were to remain in GOP hands. Trouble is, we don't know what's going to happen in the House, as the current split is 49-49-1. With that in mind, I'll be voting for Haslam, but will also have to sleep with one eye open. He'll behave himself his first term, but watch out for the second term, because that's when Tennessee governors tend to go bad. Bredesen was the exception to that rule."

Good thoughts.

My only counter-thought is that McWherter might actually be more conservative than Haslam. His dad was. Of course, this is about the same as saying Hillary Clinton is more conservative than President Obama.