Robert Stacy McCain: Sweet Tea for the GOP in Alabama

by the Left Coast Rebel

Robert Stacy McCain just emailed me his latest from the American Spectator. It relates the trials and trevails, the awakening to and coming about - of patriots in the Tea Party movement. I love the accounts of the 'most conservative state in the Union' - Alabama. An excerpt:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Don Odom stood quietly at the back of a conference room Saturday morning at the Renaissance Hotel. Tall and muscular, with a shaved head, goatee and wire-rim glasses, Odom has never been officially involved with the Alabama GOP. The truck driver from Dothan said he hadn't been sure whether to accept an invitation to attend the state Republican Party's annual winter gathering.

"Used to be, I'd wake up every four years and go vote, then I'd go back home and go back to sleep for four years," Odom explained. For the past year, however, he has been politically wide awake. He recently became chairman of the Wiregrass Patriots, one of Alabama's Tea Party groups that have turned up the heat on politicians in the state.

According to a Gallup poll released last week, Alabama is already the most conservative state in the union, but it's not yet conservative enough for grassroots activists like Odom. While last weekend's Tea Party convention in Nashville was making national headlines, the real political impact of the grassroots movement was evident among Republicans who gathered Friday and Saturday in Montgomery.

"People are fired up," said state GOP executive director John Ross, adding that his party won two special elections in 2009 and has high hopes for a breakthrough in this year's mid-terms. Those who don't follow Alabama politics are often surprised to learn that Democrats still control the state's legislature, Ross said.

"The legislature is their last stronghold," he said. "We feel like this is our shot."

Read the rest here