Alexander Exit Interview: Trump’s influence on GOP will continue
Outgoing Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, seen here in May, made a prediction on the Politics Podcast: “I’m not sure when there will ever be a post-Trump party because whether he’s president or whether he’s not, he’s going to be a factor in our party and in our country.” (Andrew Harnik/AP file)
President Donald Trump is leaving the White House next month, but Sen. Lamar Alexander says Trump won’t be leaving the Republican party anytime soon.
“I’m not sure when there will ever be a post-Trump party because whether he’s president or whether he’s not, he’s going to be a factor in our party and in our country,” the outgoing Republican senator said on The Daily Memphian Politics Podcast.
“In some ways, it will look very much the same in terms of policy. The policy is nothing so new,” Alexander said. “It’s lower taxes, fewer regulations, conservative justices and judges who enforce the law rather than make it up and other issues.”
Those other issues include the development of a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus that Alexander said are parts of a record of which he believes Trump and Republicans can be proud.
Alexander again urged Trump to “take pride in his considerable accomplishments, congratulate (Democratic President-elect) Joe Biden and help him get off to a good start as our next president.”
“What’s different about the Republican party is President Trump and his style, his behavior,” he said. “That is what stirs people up and that drew a lot of voters out in this past election. Enough came out to help elect a lot of Republicans to Congress and to the Legislature and enough came out on the other side apparently to elect Joe Biden.”
Asked if he believes Trump knows he lost the election, Alexander replied: “You’ll have to ask him.”
Alexander has no regrets about his crucial decision during Trump’s impeachment trial to vote against convicting Trump of the House impeachment counts, although he said he believed Trump did what he was accused of — namely, used his office to improperly contact Ukranian leaders in an attempt to smear Biden with unfounded accusations.
Alexander said later that he believed the experience had taught Trump not to do the same thing again.
“I’ve not made it a habit to try to give a report card on this president’s behavior or on President Obama’s liberal policies,” he said in the Friday afternoon interview. “What I’ve felt is the people elected me to work with whomever the people elected president wherever I can do things that are good for the country.”
Alexander chose not to run for re-election for a fourth term in the Senate this year after winning six statewide Republican primaries, including three bids for governor and two terms as governor as well as his three terms in the U.S. Senate.
That includes carrying Shelby County — the most Democratic county in the state — in each of the winning general elections even as the county’s Black population has grown.
“I always campaigned in all of Shelby County, not just in the white suburbs. And as a result of that, I think people paid attention to me,” he said in the interview that followed a farewell address Wednesday to the U.S. Senate.
“I think it’s very possible for Gov. Bill Lee or Sen.-elect Bill Hagerty to have that same sort of relationship with all of the citizens of Shelby County,” Alexander said. “The key is that Shelby County and Memphis have a seat at the table — Black Memphians feel like they are in the same room with a United States senator who is from another party.”
Republican candidates, including Hagerty, in down-ballot races on the Nov. 3 ballot who came through Shelby County to campaign stuck to the Republican suburbs outside the Democratic city. They also specifically said if Memphis voters wanted to get more from state government, they needed to elect more Republicans.
“Well, Democrats used to say that 50 years ago when we had a one-party Democratic system and I didn’t like to hear it,” Alexander said. “People didn’t like to hear it and we began to elect a lot of Republicans.”
“My preference is to say to people look at how we govern,” he said. “Vote for us for that reason, not based on threats that if you don’t vote for us we’re not going to do anything for you.”
In his 46-year life as a candidate for office in Tennessee, Alexander said he has seen a change to what he termed an “Internet democracy.”
“We’ve gone from President Lincoln — if he wrote a hot letter, he stuck it in the drawer for 30 days and then probably never sent it,” Alexander said. “If President Trump has a hot thought, he tweets it out and two million people will see it instantly.
“This Internet democracy drives us to the extreme and makes it a lot harder for the Senate or for anything else to try to work together to get a broad agreement that most of us can agree on,” he added.
He also said he’s seen Democrats move further left to a Democratic party that “starts at socialism and defund the police.”
“When I got started in politics, Democrats were insulted if you called them socialists. Now they are calling themselves socialists,” Alexander said. “That’s why the Tennessee Democratic Party has taken such a dive just in the last 12 years. You can’t build a state Democratic party based on a national party that touts socialism and defunding the police at the start.”
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
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