Georgia on Your Mind

Raise a glass and toast the end of Ralph Reed, the not-as-funny-as-Dave-Foley Christian Coalition fieldmarshall whose foray into elective politics hit the reef last night. Reed lost the nomination for lieutenant governor to unknown State Senator Casey Cagle, the only candidate who dared to make a race against Reed - the rest of the field had jumped out when Reed entered. Yesterday, Reed's vaunted evangelical turnout machine fell apart and Cagle won by 12 points. This will make your day:

Conservative radio-TV talk show host Sean Hannity and future presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani traveled to Georgia to help Reed build his war chest. Giuliani said it was "very important" that Reed get elected.

Tim Cavanaugh's brutal 2005 takedown of Rudy is here.

Elsewhere in Georgia, cop-blocking Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was surprisingly forced into a runoff (to win a primary race in Georgia you need to score over 50 percent) against a political nobody, former Cobb County commissioner Hank Johnson. McKinney's camp is telling bloggers that the election was flipped by rigged Diebold machines. Because, obviously, if you're the masters of a Republican election-stealing matrix, you want to keep the Dems' walking bad-headline generator out of Congress.

Comments

[SR]

"Ralph Reed, the not-as-funny-as-Dave-Foley Christian Coalition fieldmarshall"

All is forgiven, David.

[Eric Atkinson]

Crack heads for congress!

[Pro Libertate]

Feel the Foley, Dave. Let it flow through you.

I love the Diebold meme. Again, why would evil Diebold ever allow a Democrat to win again?

[Jozef]

And here I was, gloating that I live in McKinney's district, and not in Georgia 8th District where the Congressman, who sponsored a bill to have the 10 Commandments in all federal buildings, was caught knowing only three of them...

[Shannon Love]

Hee hee hee

[Eric Atkinson]

Sorry... I intended to say "Crack whores for congress."

[James Kabala]

Don't forget that McKinney actually lost the primary to Denise Majette in 2002 and was out of Congress for two years. Unfortunately Majette apparently got a swelled head from the exprience and ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2004, freeing the seat up for a McKinney comeback.

[SR]

"Sorry... I intended to say 'Crack whores for congress.'"

Darn! [puts away baseball bat]

[TF]

I'm re-subscribing after that fitting tribute to Dave Foley.

[Rhywun]

Giuliani said it was "very important" that Reed get elected.

Uh... WTF?! Is this the same Giuliani who couch-surfed at his gay buddies' place after the divorce? Who... well, I'm struggling to come up with any other actions that would get him bitch-slapped out of Ralph Reed's clique, but I'm sure there were some. This makes me want to find some more of those "GIULIANI IS A DICK" bumper stickers that were all the rage circa 2000. I'm sure I still have a couple stashed away somewhere.

[SR]

"well, I'm struggling to come up with any other actions that would get him bitch-slapped out of Ralph Reed's clique, but I'm sure there were some."

Well, Giuliani has cross-dressed:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49595

[Rhywun]

Well, Giuliani has cross-dressed

Oh yeah! And thanks for that link to the truly otherworldly WND.

[John]

Despite the claims of theocracy, no one, not even rank and file Republicans want a big bible thumper in power. Yeah, I know Bush claims to be a bible thumper when it is convienient but people voted for him in spite of that not because of it. You have to have a better reason than "I thump the bible and pray everyday and care about families" to get elected. Reed reminds me of the radical feminists on the left. They don't get elected much either because their only message is "I am a woman vote for me its good for you". Reed is no different, "I am a Christian, vote for me" doesn't win too many elections above the level of town school board.

[I'm Waitin' for Dolemite]

Mr. Hank Johnson who will be Representative McKinney's opponent in the August 8th run-off, was a _Dekalb_ County Commissioner. Dekalb county is one of the largest American suburban counties with an African-American majority. It forms the bulk of the 4th US House District. Johnson was admittedly not the most high profile candidate but certainly not a "political nobody".

The August 8th run-off will obviously come down to which candidate can get their voters to the polls in what is guaranteed to be an extremely low voter turn out. The third candidate in the race was explicitly Anti-Mckinney and his 8% of voters (if they show up in the run-off) could very well put Johnson over the top if his own voters stay with him. One thing about the run-off is that while anyone who voted in the Republican ballot yesterday is barred from voting in the run-off, any other voter in the district can vote in the run-off. Thus some Republican voters can vote against McKinney if they desired.

Likewise Casey Cagle is not "unknown" in Georgia Republican politics. He was first elected in 1994 (years before the Republican takeover of the state house) and has after-all served as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

One somewhat ironic thing about the Cagle victory is that one could argue that little of great substance differs in the platform and outlook of Cagle and Reed. Conservative Republican primary voters saw in Cagle a similar profile as their own but with out the negatives that Reed brings to the table.

Those who are rejoicing the loudest in Reed's defeat (and there was definitely some Democratic voter cross-over in the Republican primary in order to _vote against_ Ralph Reed) are now presented with a candidate in Casey Cagle that may have an easier campaign in November although his platform is similar to Ralph Reed's.

[Dolemite]

Hey, you rat-soup-eatin' honky motherfucker!

I'm surprised McKinney didn't blame it on the Jews, like she and her father did in '02.

[Solitudinarian]

I knew Ralph Reed at UGA. A personable and funny guy with a sharp wit and a silver tongue.

And I am so fucking happy that he lost.

[ILAH DUNLAP LITTLE]

In a Georgia primary, anyone can choose to vote on either party's ballot. You do not register with a party here.

So, I think that a lot of Democrats crossed over and voted against Reed.

In this case, that's just swell by me.

[John]

July 20, 2006
8:55am EDT

We can act vs. global warming, but must avoid hubris
Akron Beacon Journal | Jun 24, 2006

Fisher: Free tickets touch off school debate
The Mercury News | Jun 10, 2006

Gore's got heat in documentary on global warming
Philadelphia Daily News | Jun 2, 2006

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PEGGY NOONAN

The Heat Is On
On global warming, the media's continuing power, Ralph Reed--and revisiting last week's column.

Thursday, July 20, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

During the past week's heat wave--it hit 100 degrees in New York City Monday--I got thinking, again, of how sad and frustrating it is that the world's greatest scientists cannot gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, study meteorological patterns and temperature histories, and come to a believable conclusion on these questions: Is global warming real or not? If it is real, is it necessarily dangerous? What exactly are the dangers? Is global warming as dangerous as, say, global cooling would be? Are we better off with an Earth that is getting hotter or, what with the modern realities of heating homes and offices, and the world energy crisis, and the need to conserve, does global heating have, in fact, some potential side benefits, and can those benefits be broadened and deepened? Also, if global warning is real, what must--must--the inhabitants of the Earth do to meet its challenges? And then what should they do to meet them?

You would think the world's greatest scientists could do this, in good faith and with complete honesty and a rigorous desire to discover the truth. And yet they can't. Because science too, like other great institutions, is poisoned by politics. Scientists have ideologies. They are politicized.

All too many of them could be expected enter this work not as seekers for truth but agents for a point of view who are eager to use whatever data can be agreed upon to buttress their point of view.

And so, in the end, every report from every group of scientists is treated as a political document. And no one knows what to believe. So no consensus on what to do can emerge.

If global warming is real, and if it is new, and if it is caused not by nature and her cycles but man and his rapacity, and if it in fact endangers mankind, scientists will probably one day blame The People for doing nothing.

But I think The People will have a greater claim to blame the scientists, for refusing to be honest, for operating in cliques and holding to ideologies. For failing to be trustworthy.

The other day ABC News's Internet political report, The Note, argued that President Bush, in his then-upcoming veto statement and other presentations, had better be at the top of his game if he wants his party to hold on to Congress in 2006. "[Mr. Bush] is going to need to be focused and impressive, not easy pickings for the Rich-Krugman-Dowd-Stewart axis."
As I read I nodded: That's exactly true. What was significant is that The Note did not designate as Mr. Bush's main and most effective foes Pelosi, Dodd, Reid, Biden, et al. Mr. Bush's mightiest competitors are columnists and a comedian with a fake-news show.

This is one reason the media is important. (Not "are important." Language evolves; usage changes; people vote with their tongues. It's not the correct "return to normality"; it's the incorrect "return to normalcy." It's not "the media are" it's "the media is." People see the media as one big thing.)

One big reason the media is important is that they change things. And they lead. On 9/11 itself it was the media--anchors, reporters, crews sent to the scene, analysts--that functioned, for roughly 10 hours, as the most visible leaders of the United States. The president was on a plane; the vice president was in the bunker and on the phone. It was on-air journalists who informed, created a seeming order, and reassured the public by their presence and personas and professionalism.

So they're important. But very recently it seems to me they're important because it is from the media that Mr. Bush's most effective opposition--attacks on his nature and leadership, attacks on his policies--comes. Among the Democrats an op-ed columnist has more impact than a minority leader.

It is common wisdom that newspapers are over. But when the most powerful voices again a powerful president at a crucial time are op-ed jockeys, newspapers are not over. Or perhaps one should say paper may be over, but news is not.

Ralph Reed lost this week in his race for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor of Georgia. This strikes me as significant in several ways.
I always thought the question about Mr. Reed is: Is he a Christian who went into politics, or a politician who went into Christianity? Was he sincere and driven by a desire to have a positive impact on public policy, or a mover driven by a desire to get a piece of the action as American Christians, disaffected from a Democratic Party that had grown wildly insensitive to, and in fact disdainful of, their values, started to become a force in the Republican Party? Maybe one or the other, maybe both, maybe both but to different degrees.

I once overheard him say to a friend, a year ago, that if "they" didn't stop him as he ran for his first public office, he would be "unstoppable." "They" was the political left. He expected a rough race, but he seemed optimistic. What struck me though was the word "unstoppable." I realized: He means if he wins, he'll run for governor and then president. He sounded like a mover. And he didn't seem sincere, not in any sweet, "this is what I believe" way.

I think he'd grown enamored of being an insider, a top and big-time operative in Republican politics and within the White House. When he spoke of the White House, he said "we."

When I first met and interviewed him it was 1994, and he was part of the Gingrich revolution. He looked like a daguerreotype of one of the boy generals of the Civil War, his dark hair slicked back and his collar too big for his neck. But he had an air of command.

When I read some of the emails he'd sent to lobbyist friends--"I need some corporations, I need some moolah," that kind of thing--I thought: Ick. This is a man suffering from a case of advanced insiderism. This is a guy who thinks it's cool to be cynical.

Anyway, his defeat this week came at the hands not of "them," of the left, but of conservative voters on the ground in Georgia. His loss seems to me another sign of one of those quiet changing of the guards in professional politics. Quietly an older generation recedes, quietly a newer one rises.

Good. We need new.

Peggy Noonan on Reed this morning. Zing!!!

[cam]

ummmmmmm casey cagle liks but