On Thursday, we discussed the dangers of the so-called "National Popular Vote" scheme to Tennessee's sovereign rights as a State, and the idea that many rural areas may be discarded if this end-run around our constitutional process is adopted. Yesterday, this writer responded to the seemingly-rehearsed and anonymous responses of NPV supporters to the original piece. Late yesterday afternoon, the Tennessee Republican Party seems to have weighed in by widely circulating an op-ed piece by Tennessee Republican National Committeeman John Ryder which appeared in Friday's Washington Times decrying the National Popular Vote "compact" proposal.

 

Some of Ryder's arguments were similar to our own, and in many other ways, John Ryder put a unique spin on why the electoral college is important. What was most telling, however, was not John Ryder's article in the Times, but the fact that yesterday the Tennessee Republican Party felt the need to disseminate that article to via e-mail to its list of press, supporters, and other such interested persons. In choosing to do so, the Tennessee GOP engaged in a kind of tacit endorsement of the Ryder position (which, per Thursday and Monday's columns, is also the Oatney position), and that is important because the party acknowledged, however faintly, the threat to Tennessee's political influence within the Union that is posed by this subversive political movement, one whose supporters are thus far being anything but forward and direct about their ultimate goal, to abolish the federal Electoral College in everything but name.

 

The Democratic Party will not likely take a public position on the NPV organization, though doubtless many of that party's supporters endorse it. Since the National Popular Vote movement is a threat to this country's constitutional order and balance of power, it is more than appropriate for the Republican Party to come out squarely against this putrid game of political demagoguery, not for the sake of gamesmanship, but for the sake of fidelity to our constitutional and electoral traditions.