If the Republican Party is to be successful in Hamilton County, in Tennessee or in the United States, it must be a big-tent party.
It must never become a party beholden to traditional Republicans, Trump Republicans, anti-abortion Republicans, white Republicans or any faction that would say any other reasonable faction must be excluded.
As Ronald Reagan first said in his 1966 campaign for governor of California, “That shalt not speak ill of another Republican.”
Which brings us to Saturday’s reorganization meeting of the Hamilton County Republican Party.
To the best of our knowledge, the local party has been without overt squabbles over party leadership as the GOP as been ascendant in the state and in the county over the last 30 years. Perhaps that has been because the party had not been in power over most of the previous century, and being on top smoothed over most visible wrinkles.