No tactical shifts. Just pretense, nativism, and hypocrisy.

Mary Mancini's take on the Nashville Scene's latest pitch of Eric Crafton and English Only also challenges Caleb Hannan's claim about some post-veto, "shrewd" shift in tactics:

Let’s say, for argument sake, that all of the above is true. If so, then Crafton is also a little too “alarmingly left-brained” and a little too driven by his ideals to see that he’s being manipulated by Jon Crisp, his “friend” and former head of the Davidson County GOP.

Because Crisp, in this week’s Nashville Scene cover story, let the singular purpose of the “English Only” Amendment slip:

Crafton certainly saw no gray in English Only when he and his friend and adviser Jon Crisp devised it a couple of years ago. Crisp says that English Only came to be during one of his and Crafton’s regular spitball sessions.

“Eric and I pick up on topics that we think are timely,” he says. “And you know as well as I do that any given day I can make an issue out of illegal immigration.”

Yes. We know. You’re, uh, doing it right now. You topic is “timely” because since 2004, when then-Senator Majority leader Bill Frist first introduced immigration as a problem, the unholy alliance of right-wing cable TV anouncers, talk radio hosts, and Fox News have increasingly inflamed nativist sentiment.