VOLuntarilyConservative

To all of the well-wishers, friends, and family who have called and e-mailed, I thank you for doing so, but I need a little time before I come out of the bunker and transition back into "real life."

I have been with this campaign since November of 2004. That's 22 months. Certain faiths have been strained, and I am going to need a little time to digest what has just happened before I resume normal activity.

Yesterday is just a blur. Angela and I got up at 4:00 A.M. (after going to sleep less than two hours earlier), placed signs at the polls, worked the polls for twelve hours in heat indexes that were over triple digits, drove to Nashville after closing down our respective polling places, attended Ed's party at the DoubleTree, tried to make sense of everything with other people who have bled for this campaign while listening to bad Nashville karoeke, and then drove back to Knoxville for Angela's court hearings this morning.

The night was a crossroads for so many people. Ed Bryant, who has some political viability left in Tennessee if he chose to wield it, voluntarily leaves Tennessee politics. Van Hilleary, who has no political viability left, is already preparing to physically leave Tennessee. Harold Ford, Jr., who every conservative pundit worth his salt sees as having the greatest night of his political life, raises tons of money, raises his national profile, and without a doubt picks up the opponent he is best prepared to defeat in November on his way to the United States Senate.

And then there is me. Like a few of the radio conservatives in Nashville, my faith in the people of Tennessee is now tested. I see David Davis barely squeaking out a victory in the 1st District, which is probably a good thing as long as he doesn't try to stay in the seat for three decades. So I can look to my district as one place of sanity, right?

Well, not really. East Tennessee was the region most fooled by a political charlatan from Chattanooga that it knew nothing about except that he made good commercials and had the money to run them 24/7. In that respect, South Knoxville, where I have concentrated a good deal of my time during this campaign, looks from the precinct reports I have seen to have been more enlightened, voting for the better man in Ed Bryant at a higher clip than the rest of the region than the blatant fraud Bob Corker.

Finally, there is conservatism in Tennessee. Where does it go from here? It certainly is an ideology in trouble. Republicans just nominated a moderate as their Senate candidate, and the electorate will vote to send a softened liberal from an infamous political family to the U.S. Senate come this November. Democrat Phil Bredesen is more than likely headed to his second term in the Governor's Mansion. With the exception of the presidential elections in 2000 and 2004, this "red" state has selected the less conservative candidate every time in the last decade.

Conservatism is at a crossroads in this state. Last night, a few of the major "behind the scenes" conservatives in Tennessee quietly called for a leader, to claim back what has been lost in recent years. Who takes the reins and leads us into the coming election seasons is crucial to our political ideology's relevance in this state.

I have ranted on much longer than I had intended, and I apologize for that. I would like to say congratulations to Bob Krumm, who easily won his primary last night, as well as Stacey Campfield, Frank Nicely, Larry Clark, Paul Pinkston, and my better half, Angela Huddleston, who all destroyed their opponents at the ballot box. I would also like to say how honored I was to meet bloggers Sharon Cobb and Blake Wylie last night in Nashville. As usual, the honor was all mine.

More to come later, folks...