Rep. John Tanner's family has farmed in Union City since before the Civil War.
We're driving down a winding country lane in a small West Tennessee town, not far from the Kentucky state line. It's called Walker Tanner road.
"That's my grandfather," Tanner says.
Tanner is a co-founder of the Blue Dog Coalition — the caucus of fiscally conservative House Democrats. It's been a home to the pro-gun, anti-abortion Democrats who have picked up seats in traditional Republican territory in recent elections.
We drive by the stable of Tennessee walking horses, between fields where the soybeans and corn have been harvested, and stop at a barn flanked by dog pens.
"This is where we keep the quail," Tanner says.
The dogs bark as the quail coo.
The quail stay in the barn until its time for the hunt. Then, they're loaded into crates and taken to a wooded field nearby.
"Then you open the thing and they fly out all over the place," Tanner says. "And then you put the dogs down and the dogs go and find them and point them, and you shoot them."
'Too Liberal And Too Conservative'
Sitting by the fireplace in Quail Haven, his family's rustic, wood-paneled hunting lodge, Tanner says the South is a tough place for incumbent Democrats now — even those of the Blue Dog breed.
Doesn't Tanner seen the irony of this? Or doesn't he know what the word Haven means. I told my friend Debby this story and she said, "What would he have called Auschwitz, the Jewish Spa?"
