A capacity crowd Friday night at the Greene County Republican Womens Club's annual Lincoln Day Dinner got to hear U.S. Rep. Phil Roe, M.D., R-1st, plus Tennessee Lt. Gov Ron Ramsey, of Blountville, and Knoxille Mayor Bill Haslam.

Ramsey and Haslam are seeking the GOP nomination for governor, and each got to speak for about two minutes.

Two other governor candidates had been promised, but Shelby County District Attorney General Bill Gibbons was snowbound in New England, said aide Cabe Benedict. U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, of Chattanooga, had another engagement in Monroe County, but was ably represented by his son, Weston, a 2009 graduate of the University of Tennessee, who spoke, and daughter Coty, a junior at UT.

Also speaking were state Rep. David Hawk, R-5th, of Greeneville, state Sen. Steve Southerland, R-1st, of Morristown, and Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Chris Devaney, of Chattanooga, who brought his wife, Heather.

About 270 people were on hand at the General Morgan Inn, and 300 tickets were sold for $30 each, said Greene County Register of Deeds Joy Rader, the ticket chairman.

The audience came to its feet to applaud Roe after he was introduced by Rep. Hawk.

The freshman congressman told the audience that when President Barack Obama offered to meet with Iranian Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, there were "no preconditions," but that was not the case when the president held a "summit" with Republican leaders to discuss health care on Thursday.

Roe, a retired obstetrician/gynecologist and former mayor of Johnson City, was one of seven doctors on the GOP "truth squad" for the president's summit on Thursday.

Roe noted that Obama is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

He drew laughter when he quipped that the president had just been awarded a Winter Olympics medal "for the downhill," because the judges "never saw anybody go downhill so fast in their life," a reference to the president's falling approval ratings.

Roe said that one reason for the drop is that the president and his party have put in place programs that, by 2020, will mean that Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, plus interest, "will suck up 80 percent of all the federal budget, leaving 20 percent for defense, roads, education and everything else."

Roe said that when he went to congress, "I thought being a conservative was normal," but quickly found that about 100 members of congress are "rabid socialists" who want to spend the U.S. "into oblivion."

He was applauded when he said, "The only way to get these addicts off of spending" is to take control of congress, "and we are going to get back in control this fall."

Roe said that, of 1,100 people in the 1st District who voted in a poll after a tele-town hall Roe held Thursday night, 5 percent want the president's health care reform package passed as is, 38 percent want it dumped, and 52 percent want work on health care to stop so that congress can "work on jobs."

Roe said that, from his perspective, Thursday's summit displayed the Democratic party "struggling to force-feed something the people don't want."

Roe turned briefly to "cap and trade" legislation designed to create a carbon dioxide abatement market that would, he said, "be a huge tax on business."

Cap and trade, if enacted, could put Eastman Chemical Co., which employs 9,500 at Kingsport and uses 60 train car loads of coal each day, "out of business."

The quietest moment of the evening came when Roe shared with the audience that he had met the mother of Army Sgt. Rusty Christian on an airplane from Atlanta to the Tri-Cities, and asked for a moment of silence for the Greeneville High School graduate killed in Afghanistan. (Please see related article on Page A-1).

Roe said he would continue to fight for quality health care for returning veterans as a member of the Veterans Affairs Committee, and to fight in congress in general, because "we owe them everything we've got in the fight to get our country back."

Roe later asked all veterans in the room to stand.

Knoxville Mayor Haslam started his remarks by saying he has said in the past that the next governor will face one of the most difficult assignments in recent memory.

Now, he said, he believes it will be "the hardest time to be governor of Tennessee, ever."

Incredible pressure to bring jobs to the state is one reason, he said, with statewide unemployment at 11 percent.

The other reason is that the budget this year contains $1.2 billion from one-time stimulus payments and $200 million taken from the state's rainy-day fund "that won't be available next year."

He promised, if elected, to "be a faithful steward of every tax dollar," as he has in Knoxville; to bring jobs to the state by using his experience as someone who knows why Tennessee is a good place to be in business; to bring real reform in education; and to respect the value of life."

Ramsey was applauded early in his remarks when he said that, as the only person in the race who has started two small businesses and still runs one, "I know what small business wants from government: absolutely nothing."

Small business does need a trained workforce, Ramsey said, and as governor, he said he would try to spread educational successes to failing schools, which in Tennessee are mostly located in inner cities.

But he also said he believes "the only thing that's going to fix failing schools is competition, so he supports charter schools and is "a big advocate of home schools."

He noted that 25 percent of the U.S. Naval Academy's midshipmen were home-schooled.

Ramsey said he believes that Tennessee is a special state that he is proud of.

He also said he is "adamantly pro-life" and proud that the legislature cut $250,000 of funding to abortion provider Planned Parenthood last year, funds that most legislators did not even know were being allocated that way.

He also said he is proud of introducing the handgun carry bill that now has enabled "270,000 law-abiding citizens" to carry handguns and has not produced the trouble opponents predicted.

Ramsey commended Roe for standing against "out of control" Washington, and fighting for small business.

State GOP chairman Devaney said that congressional seats in Tennessee that have been held by Democrats like Al Gore and John Tanner for as long as anyone can remember "are in play" this year.

He asked Jeremy Faison, of Cosby, who is seeking the GOP nomination for the 11th state House district seat now held by Eddie Yokley, to stand. He also asked Don Miller, who is a Republican seeking to win the seat in Hamblen County being vacated by John Litz to stand.

Devaney pledged that the state party "will do everything in our power" to put Republicans in those seats, because "those two seats have national importance."