This weekend Governor Nathan Deal will be vilified because he has ignored the grassroots and gone against the will of the people. Which lead me to wonder how can a sitting Governor that garnered more that 1.3 million votes in his last two elections be so bad?
So I would speculate that the real issue here is not the Governor but the perversion of the word “grassroots” and the phrase “the will of the people”.
Grassroots used to identify those people who volunteered in campaigns of people they believed in and supported. Grassroots were the people who setup and took down the chairs at the County meetings. Grassroots used to phone bank, sign wave and in their own way contribute positively to the political process.
Some where along the way grassroots got high-jacked by the “purists”, the single-issue people and most recently by the “anybody but (name)” crowd.
Realizing the narrowness of their own perspective, the grassroots now has adopted the tactics of the master of diversion – Bill Clinton. When pressed on the variety of scandals he created over the years he always deflected by saying he was “doing the will of the people” and would not be distracted by these accusations.
Fortunately most people have come to realize what you really mean is “the will of the people as long as they are our people”. And as a result I suspect Nathan Deal would get more than 1.3 million votes again in 2018 if he were not restricted by term limits.