Senator Voinvich claims Ohioans can't relate to pro-gun Republicans from the South

By Chad D. Baus

One week after ignoring thousands of phone calls from his constituents and helping a Democrat filibuster kill nationwide CCW reciprocity, Republican Senator George Voinovich of Ohio told editors at the Columbus Dispatch he knows what the Republican party's biggest problem is.

According to the anti-gun Senator, who has decided to retire after recognizing a 2010 re-election bid would meet the same fate as anti-gun Mike DeWine's did in 2006, Ohioans just can't relate to pro-gun Republicans from the South.

On Monday, Voinovich told Dispatch editors "We got too many Jim DeMints (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburns (R-Okla.). It's the Southerners. They get on TV and go "errrr, errrrr." People hear them and say, 'These people, they're Southerners. The party's being taken over by Southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'"

Judging by the 2006 defeat of Mike DeWine and the fact that Voinovich is not running again, the real question that has been asked, and answered, by Ohio voters is "what the hell do these anti-gun Republicans have to do with Ohio?"

Based on his comments to the Dispatch, it seems Voinovich, yet another person that left Ohio to find a job, has been gone far too long. While he is busy in D.C., projecting his own inability to relate to his pro-gun colleagues onto his constituents, roughly 160,000 Ohioans have obtained Ohio concealed handgun licenses, and voters elected pro-gun Democrats to the state-wide positions of Governor, Attorney General and Treasurer, as well as a pro-gun Democrat-controlled majority in the Ohio House.

When reflecting on Voinovich's out-of-touch and bigoted remarks, Buckeye Firearms Association Region Leader and self-described Southern gentlemen Larry S. Moore observed that "maybe instead of bitching about the way we talk, he should be looking at the way we walk the walk."

If the party is being taken over by Southerners, as Voinovich suggests, perhaps it's because so many well-educated Ohioans are moving south to escape oppressive gun laws and years of tax and spending increases in the state brought about by legislators in the Ohio GOP.

Indeed, research shows Ohio has been losing an estimated 36,500 residents on average each year to other states since 2004. Ohio's trend of losing its college graduates is so prolific it has even earned a media nickname: "Brain Drain." And to what region of the country are the largest number of our graduates moving? You guessed it - the South!

In 1988, then-Texas State Treasurer Ann Richards mocked then-Vice President and GOP presidential nominee George H. W. Bush in her best southern drawl (the same accent Voinovich insinuates Ohioans can't relate to, apparently ignorant of the fact that many Ohioans in the southern part of the state use the same dialect):

"Poor George," Richards said. "He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

Today, it seems Richards was almost right...she just got the wrong George.

Chad Baus is a Member of the Fulton County, OH Republican Central Committee and the Buckeye Firearms Association Vice Chairman.