Kent Williams lacks the trust to be re-instated as a Republican

The rumors are fast circulating that at Saturday's Tennessee State Republican Executive Committee meeting, a motion will be attempted to try and reinstate Kent Williams to the Republican Party, presumably so that Williams will be able to run as a Republican next year when he will certainly seek re-election to the House. For those Tennesseans who have spent the last 12 months on another planet, Williams joined with 49 Democrats to install himself as Speaker of the House, denying Republican nominee Jason Mumpower-the Republican Leader-the Speaker's chair after leading the whole world to believe he would vote for Mumpower.

Since I was on the House floor when all of this unfolded, I have a unique sense of the anger and the hurt that so many people on the Republican side of the aisle were feeling that day. For a long time, I could not bear to look upon Kent Williams' face. What he allowed himself to do repulsed me, and I had to ask my God to help me forgive Kent Williams for what he had done. It took time, but God gave me the grace not only to forgive Williams in my heart, but to be able to admit when the Speaker did the right thing, and confess that his tenure has not been the disaster many of us had feared. I've come a long way since January in the "forgive your enemies" department.

There is a vast gulf, however, between forgiveness and trust-and trust is not something that the current Speaker of the House has managed yet to cultivate in me, or many other conservatives. I realize that many others have come to the belief that because this past year has been a vast improvement over what conservatives had expected, Kent Williams should be welcomed back into the Republican fold with no strings attached. We should all behave, say some, as though January 13, 2009 did not happen at all. To his credit, Williams has a growing cadre of supporters-including no small number of conservatives-who believe that he should be readmitted to the party, at least one told me he believes that then-Republican Chairman Robin Smith acted in haste to remove Williams.

The problem is that Kent Williams put his name to a paper stating that he would vote for a Republican for Speaker, and he knew that by "Republican" it was accepted that this meant the Republican nominee for this position. Williams joined 49 other Republicans the month after the 2008 election to nominate Jason Mumpower for Speaker unanimously, 50-0. For his part, Kent Williams has always claimed that his final decision to accept the Democratic nomination for Speaker of the House did not come until moments before the vote. Williams says that he just "changed his mind," and he apparently had problems with Jason Mumpower for quite some time. Apparently, changing one's mind is, in Kent Williams' universe, enough of an excuse to forgive the breaking of one's good word.
 
If anyone thinks my hesitance to trust Kent Williams is based on some blind loyalty to Jason Mumpower, those who are remotely familiar with my body of work will recall that Mumpower and myself have not always seen eye to eye and have occasionally clashed publicly. My criticism of Mumpower began on the very day he was elected Leader over Bill Dunn-and truthfully, I still believe that if Bill Dunn had been Leader on January 13th, Bill Dunn would be the Speaker of the House (I am of the mind that we would probably have gotten a majority regardless of who had been Leader in 2008). Jason, however, has always known I am a Dunn man, that was never hidden, and we have dealt with one another in the past with him being fully aware of that reality. I always respected the fact that we can't relive the 2006 Leadership race, and that Jason in January of this year was not just the Republican House Leader, but the caucus nominee unanimously for Speaker-because of that, it was a question of honor that every man and woman who nominated him owed it to the caucus and the State, if not to Mumpower, to back the man that they pledged themselves to.

Kent Williams had ample opportunity to voice his objections to Mumpower, and even to do so in a very public way. I know that if it had been me in Kent Williams' shoes, and I had been turned off by Jason Mumpower's means or methods of securing power to the degree that I would consider colluding to stop him, I certainly would not put my name to paper saying that I would support him, much less say I was planning to vote for him on the air or in public, as Kent Williams did at least once. Beyond merely issues relating to Williams' (or anyone else's) relationship to Jason Mumpower, Williams' behavior brings into question whether his word can be trusted, and then even if it is proven that it can be, he apparently failed to let his true feelings about the developing situation on Capitol Hill be known when he had the chance. If he objected to Jason Mumpower being Speaker of the House, he needed to take a stand rather than run, hide, and then engage in chicanery and deception. When I believe something strongly enough to put my name to it, I stand by what I have said, and if I can't, I don't make the promise to begin with-even if not doing so might cost me dearly politically.

Several more liberal bloggers don't seem to understand how Kent Williams can be equated to Judas Iscariot, and Chattanooga blogger Joe Lance doesn't seem to think that Kent Williams' actions were all that big of a deal. When I think of Kent Williams, however, another biblical passage comes to mind aside from the suicidal betrayer of our Lord and Savior. That passage is from the Epistle of St. James the Greater, Chapter 1, Verses 6-8:

But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, which is moved and carried about by the wind. Therefore let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is inconstant in all his ways.

By his actions, Kent Williams has shown us that he is nothing if not a double minded man.

It should be noted that I have not come to my position on the Williams matter reflexively. I have weighted the positives and negatives of allowing Williams to return to the Republican fold at this time, and it is not in my instinct to exclude anyone-I thought the removal of Davidson County Republican Vice Chairman Matt Collins was horrible business. I would think it to be rank hypocrisy for the party to give the boot someone as active as Collins for making public comments as per his negative opinion of one of our gubernatorial candidates, while then voting through its State Executive Committee to re-instate Kent Williams, who openly betrayed our party leadership after giving his word that he would vote with them on the officers of the House.

I also have nothing personal against Kent Williams any longer, and where we can all work for the good of Tennessee, I think we should come together and do that.

I know of several people, including my own Representative, who now favor re-instatement for Kent Williams, but I cannot in good conscience agree to this (especially when my conscience is screaming at the top of its lungs "NO!"). We still have no real proof that a man who thinks himself qualified to decide on committee chairs after one full term in the House before becoming Speaker, and who, I am told, hasn't made a great impression on some Executive Committee members by declaring who is and isn't qualified to be on certain committees (even though most everyone who might be a Chairman has more seniority and years of service in the House than Kent Williams) can be trusted to keep his word to others on small things, when he broke his word on something so great.

Those conservatives now inclined to support Kent Williams for re-enstatement should remember that if he can break his word to Jason Mumpower in such a public way and then try and justify it, he could do the same to you.

The issue is not whether we can forgive Kent Williams, but whether we as Republicans can trust him to lead us, because if he is re-instated while still serving as Speaker of the House, he will then become the de facto Leader in the lower chamber. Kent Williams has not demonstrated that he carries with him the trust that makes a leader fit to lead.