Home > Political Insider > Archives > 2007 > February > 16
Friday, February 16, 2007
Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The state Capitol is empty, and will remain so through Monday.
Some people think this is Presidents Day weekend, and in some places it might be.
Here, it’s the start of the NASCAR season. If history is any guide, an elite delegation of state legislators has been dispatched to the Florida shores to see why Daytona 500 drivers prefer left-handed turns over right-handed ones.
Political observers will be watching to see if Republicans have brightened up any, and have included any Democrats on the junket — to give it a bipartisan look that might tone down any criticism. That’s how Democrats did it when they were in power.
Is it cold in here, or has hell frozen over?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall do not like each other. The first is Republican and the second a Democrat. Marshall once ran against Chambliss for Congress.
More important, Marshall has been mentioned as a Democratic challenger to Chambliss in ‘08.
And so it was strange to see the two issue a joint, bipartisan press release late Friday, to reassure the home folks that the two members of Congress from middle Georgia were indeed working together to bring home the bacon.
Chambliss was quoted first in the press release, Marshall second. Not that we place any importance on such things.
At issue is a $21 million software support center at Robins Air Force Base. It’s been sliced out of one budget bill, and the pair are now trying to get slipped into the next one.
This sounds a bit like what’s happening with PeachCare — and one wonders whether a new requirement has been placed on all Southern Republicans in Washington. That is, in a Democratically controlled Congress, if a GOP senator or House member has not openly liked himself with a Democratic go-between, he might as well stay home.
