Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey makes Obama-al-Qaida remark on Twitter

Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey

NASHVILLE – Republican Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey’s tweet Wednesday charging President Barack Obama with attempting to “ally” the U.S. with al-Qaida in Syria’s civil war is generating demands by Democrats that he apologize.

Ramsey, the Senate speaker, earlier tweeted that “as the president attempts to ally w/ Al-Qaida in syria’s civil war, we must always remember who attacked us on our soil 12 years ago.”

Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Roy Herron condemned Ramsey’s message and said Ramsey, the state Senate speaker, “should fire whoever wrote such an outrageous, dishonest, misleading, incendiary, unpatriotic and dangerous attack on our nation’s president and on Republican leaders like Senators [Bob] Corker and [John] McCain and House Speaker [John] Boehner and even the military Leaders working with them.”

Herron said in his statement that “many of us are unsure about how to proceed in Syria, but whoever wrote that tweet dishonors the victims of 9/11 and our military men and women who are doing all they can to stop more children and parents from being gassed and killed.”