Obama's Enemies List: A Growing List of Obama's Enemies

Paul Chesser helpfully blogged earlier today about the news that Sarah Palin endorsed another candidate today, Renee Ellmers, who is running for Congress against North Carolina’s Bob Etheridge, he of the serious anger management issues and the very low regard for young interviewers. His post reminds me that I have been remiss in doing a mini-feature on Ms. Ellmers, who sounded absolutely delightful in an interview I conducted with her back on Aug. 6. Excuse, then, the length of this report, but I think it’s safe to say I was definitely impressed. Ms. Ellmers is a registered nurse who has done most of her work in surgical intensive care; she now works with her husband, who is a general surgeon. She was supposed to be the president this year of the local Chamber of Commerce in Dunn, NC, population about 10,000, but put that off when she decided to run for Congress. And she has sat on the town’s planning board (zoning, basically) for four years, three of them as chair. But other than those non-elective means of public service, she told me that she had previously “not even been interested in any part of being involved in politics.” She long has been conservative, and a registered Republican for more than 20 years, she said, but never in any way active in elections. Then Obamacare came along. Here, in quotes spliced together to avoid my interposing questions and some asides, but entirely in context, is what she told me: “Well, basically, a year ago when the health care debate was so hot, my husband and I decided we were going to get involved with speaking out at different events that were being held, health-care rallies, on behalf of doctors and nurses, to let people know that doctors and nurses are not on board with regard to health care reform. I also became inolved with the Harnett County Republican Party for the first time. “We have a 15 year old son. I am very worried about his future and that of all our children with all the debt we are leaving to them. It’s a very conservative district. The people here are good, conservative, God-fearing, hard-working people and Congressman Etheridge is not represenative of them. He basically votes with President Obama 97% of the time. There was a large outcry for him to vote no on the health-care bill, but he voted yes and that has hurt him badly in this district. “I