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Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Whether Kennedy-Clinton or McCain-Romney, the dynamics are familiar
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Suddenly, the parallels between the Republican and Democratic races for president have become more than striking.
In Florida tonight, the GOP race has narrowed to a two-man race between John McCain, the distrusted party maverick, and Mitt Romney, who has pieced together the remnants of the Bush establishment in the South.
On a very real level, this contest isn’t just for the White House. Tonight’s vote tallies will go a long way toward determining what team will be put in charge of the national Republican party apparatus. McCain in many respects represents a house-cleaning.
A similar dynamic has jumped up on the Democratic side. But to explain it we need to go back to 1980, when a much younger Ted Kennedy challenged incumbent President Jimmy Carter, who was seeking re-election.
Kennedy lost, but so did much-weakened Carter.
“The control of the Democratic National Committee has always been a paramount thing with a lot of Democrats. And the Kennedys have pretty well been in that position for quite some time,” said Bert Lance, the venerable Carter insider.
For the second time in three decades, Kennedy — through a this week’s alliance with Barack Obama — is attempting to thwart the extension of what’s left of the Southern faction in the party. Ignore the fact that Hillary Clinton is a senator from New York. Concentrate on her husband, and his accent.
Lance said Tuesday that the fault lines are similar. “I think there’s a worthy comparison there. I assume that not only control of the presidency, but control of the party is involved in this thing,” he said.
We asked if Carter ever got past Kennedy’s 1980 challenge, whether the pair ever made up. “From the standpoint of civility and everything, yes,” Lance said. “From the standpoint of not really understanding why, probably not.”
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People with poor word skills would call this ‘synergy’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We all know that Georgia Democrats will hold their Jefferson-Jackson Day fund-raiser in the Georgia World Congress Center on Wednesday night.
Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are attending.
We also know that four of the nation’s largest African-American Baptist conventions are meeting in Atlanta on the same day. In the same building. With thousands upon thousands of delegates from around the country.
To no one’s surprise, Clinton just announced she’s added the National Baptist Convention to her schedule for a 4 p.m. address.
Edwards’ people say he’ll have to give the Baptist convention a miss. He’s to be in New Orleans tomorrow afternoon, tapping nails into a Habitat for Humanity house.
A last word from Florida: Reed is on the ground with Romney
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Associated Press has this interesting paragraph in its latest dispatch from Florida, describing a final Mitt Romney rally in Tampa:
Among those in attendance was a brew of his past and present supporters: Mike Murphy, a former strategist who has also worked with McCain; former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed; and senior adviser Ron Kaufman, who had been off the road for a week after Romney declared he had no lobbyists running his campaign…
Remember that Reed, the former chairman of the Georgia GOP, was the fellow assigned the task of turning out Florida voters during the 2004 Bush re-election campaign — when the GOP was worried about a repeat of the 2000 debacle.
You can’t tell a New Yorker much — but especially not that
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here’s the link to the New Yorker article that is causing so much fuss, in which Superior Court Judge Hilton Fuller says “everyone in the world knows” that Brian Nichols committed the rampage in the Fulton County courthouse that left a string of people dead.
The AJC story about the reaction to the judge’s comments can be found here.
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Rumor-killing: Kidd says it was Obama’s decision not to come
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Democratic party chairman Jane Kidd spent a few minutes this morning murdering a blog-generated rumor that presidential candidate Barack Obama had been somehow blocked from attending Wednesday night’s Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner.
Which is kind of silly on the face of it, when you consider that the dinner is a fund-raiser, and Obama’s face would launch a thousand ticket sales. (Hillary Clinton and John Edwards will be at the Georgia World Congress Center event.)
The topic came up on Tim Bryant’s morning show on WGAU (1340AM) in Athens. He fed us this sound clip.
“[Obama] is invited and we’d love for him to come. We did get word from him the night before last that he was not going to be here, and we had set a rule long ago that we would not accept surrogates,” Kidd said.
“I respect the fact that he’s had to choose among wonderful opportunities, and he just had to choose a different place for tomorrow night.”
Shafer to Grady: Hospital workers, heal thyselves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Sen. David Shafer (R-Duluth) has already introduced two measures aimed at Grady Memorial Hospital and its transition to an institution run by a non-profit corporation.
One would establish a legislative oversight committee to monitor the charity hospital, and a second would prohibit its board directors from having any financial interest in its operations.
Now he’s come up with a third, S.R. 748, urging the hospital to encourage employees to use Grady as the place where they go when they get sick.
“Grady spends $18 million annually providing health care for its 5,000 employees, but unlike most large hospital employers, does not encourage or require its employees to use Grady as their primary health care provider,” Shafer said in his press release.
That probably doesn’t get at the needs of your average R.N. who lives in the ‘burbs — Grady has no satellite outposts. But as a quality control measure, it might have an impact.
As far as that goes, Grady is only a block or two away from the state Capitol, home to thousands and thousands of state workers, plus a few hundred lawmakers. And state health insurance policies are so darned high.
Shafer says the bill has Democratic support, but the top six names on the measure are all Republican.
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