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Ron Paul-Republican making run at Davidson GOP chair
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Matt Collins and Rep. Ron Paul |
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UPDATE: DCGOP CHAIRPERSON ELECTION RESULTS
County Republicans select party officers Saturday at their biannual reorganization meeting. And one young local party-chair candidate says now’s the time for bold new blood and brash new perspectives and directions -- that is, if the party has plans to compete nationally again anytime soon against activist-government progressivism.
Twenty-seven-year-old Matt Collins, a sound engineer and producer at Supertalk 99.7 WTN, said the 2008 presidential election showed in rather stark terms that the GOP needs to start embracing a “younger, more philosophically-motivated” brand of “limited-government conservatism” of the sort Ron Paul aroused during his primary run last year.
“If you look at what happened in the general election, younger people in America were working for the other side: They campaigned for Obama, most of them,” said Collins. “It’s clear the Republican Party needs to change directions and bring young people in who’re energetic, passionate and willing to work. The party needs people who actually understand and can utilize new technologies, adhere to a traditional conservative philosophy and can move the party forward in the 21st Century.”
Of course, given the Tennessee GOP’s historic legislative gains at the state level in November, establishment Republicans could probably be forgiven for thinking they’re doing just fine as things stand now, thank you very much. An email from TNGOP chief of staff Mark Winslow that circulated around Tennessee Republican circles last month said as much: The Old Guard can do without the zealous peace&freedom-purists that Rep. Paul’s campaign so emboldened.
“I'm not going to be put in a position of having these nut jobs elect a (Davidson County GOP) chairman who will question or announce they will not support the Republican candidate for Governor or nominees for the House and Senate the way (Collins) does with his McCain comments,” Winslow wrote. “We have too many strong opportunities next year.”
Collins, whose opponent for the chairmanship is current vice-chair Kathleen Starnes, said the offending “McCain comments” he made were words to the effect that he “would not personally vote for a big government liberal even if they were a Republican.”
“Apparently, Mr. Winslow and the TNGOP expect all Republicans to support the R-candidates, even if they are big-government, liberty-oppressing, liberals,” Collins shot back.
A 2005 Middle Tennessee State University graduate, Collins said he was raised in a “conservative Republican” household. He said that over the course of the Bush administration he started believing the GOP was abandoning the values he was taught growing up.
Paul’s presidential candidacy, and the energetic following it stimulated, reawakened in Collins a resurgent sense of optimism and idealism.
“Ron Paul is true to principles and he isn’t going to compromise those principles. That’s what the Republican Party needs right now,” said Collins.
Outgoing Davidson County GOP chairman Tom Lawless told Examiner.com he won’t officially endorse a favorite in the race to succeed him. But Lawless said he’s long believed expanding the party base to include new voters and new demographics will require new leaders with new visions.
Collins appears to fit the mold, said Lawless.
“The party needs to get younger and it needs to get more inclusive,” said Lawless. “(Starnes) is clearly a status-quo candidate, and she’d be the pick of the older generation that currently has the reins of power. But you’ve got to pass those reins at some point. I recognized very early in Matt the strength of his energies and of his traditional conservative beliefs that go back, not just to the ideas of Ronald Reagan, but to the ideas of the Founding Fathers. Matt has exhibited to me some extremely good leadership qualities in a very, very short period of time.”
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