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Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Newt on Hillary: ‘The mountain is very, very high’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Wednesday that Hillary Clinton’s bid to be the Democratic presidential nominee is looking grim.
“I think the mountain is very, very high, verging on a cliff,” Gingrich said in Atlanta following a bill-signing ceremony with Gov. Sonny Perdue. “On the other hand, the Clintons almost never give up.”
The legislation signed by the governor boosts high-premium health insurance plans that are paired with health savings accounts, and Gingrich has championed similar proposals.
The former House speaker talked politics after the formalities with my state Capitol colleague, Aaron Gould Sheinin.
Gingrich said he assumes Clinton will win primaries in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico, but doubts they’ll provide her with the momentum she now needs. Her victory over Barack Obama in Indiana on Tuesday was not big enough, he said.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions about Senator Obama,” he said. “And people in the Democratic Party have to wonder whether he is the next John F. Kennedy or he’s the next George McGovern, Mike Dukakis — and they don’t know yet.”
He suspects Democratic party leaders are putting pressure on Clinton to drop her bid, but knowing the Clintons as he does, “I wouldn’t bet anything that they’re going to get out.”
As for the strong warning he gave this week to Republicans in Congress, Gingrich said the stern tones are warranted.
“When you lose the speaker’s seat in Illinois that you’ve had for 75 years, and you lose a seat in Louisiana you’ve had since 1977 — a seat, by the way, that George W. Bush carried by 19 points — and you look at the national polling data, you had better figure out that the voters generally are not happy with how Republicans have run Washington,” Gingrich said.
“And they’ve got, I think, three or four months to prove that they got the message. And if they don’t prove that, they should expect to have a very, very tough election,” he said.
However, voter upheaval doesn’t extend to third party bids, such as the one being considered by another former Georgia Republican congressman, Bob Barr.
“No reasonable conservative is going to vote for anybody except (John) McCain if the alternative is Clinton or Obama,” Gingrich said. “Barr is not alternative. Barr has zero hope of winning.”
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And if that doesn’t work, lashes with a wet noodle are in the offing
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We are well into the trash-talking phase of the Democratic primary.
A beefed-up U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Atlanta has climbed into the Wrestlemania ring and is ready to discuss his two July rivals, state Rep. “Able” Mable Thomas and the Rev. Markel Hutchins.
Microphone, please.
“I’m going to give them a non-violent kick,” promised Lewis, still a proper follower of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.
Seriously, my D.C. colleague Julia Malone sat down with Lewis today, and filed this on her blog:
The Atlanta Democrat, first elected to Congress in 1986, said he was “somewhat surprised that someone would challenge me and talk about change. That’s what I’ve been about all my life. I am change. But it’s okay. People have a right to run.”
He vowed to return every weekend to his home district and take nothing for granted. “I want to win big,” Lewis said. “No one is going to outwork me.”
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‘Bubba’ no more
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Southern politics are chockfull of cultural markers — signals and messages, some encrypted and some not, that say much about who we are as a people.
Race is the big one, of course. But there are others, and they are perishable.
We lost a significant marker last week. It was shelved without fanfare, but only after much internal deliberation.
Lauren W. McDonald Jr., a 69-year-old Republican, signed up to reclaim the seat on the Public Service Commission that he lost in 2002. But for the first time in 39 years of politicking, McDonald’s nickname will not appear on the ballot with him.
“Bubba” is no more.
“It was a decision that was deeply discussed,” McDonald said. This was a serious statement, made without irony — for the decision cuts to the man’s very identity.
Lauren McDonald Jr./SPECIAL
Since the late ‘60s, when he was a Jackson County commission chairman, over a thousand plates of barbecue and in a thousand Kiwanis Club speeches, and throughout an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1990, McDonald has introduced himself as “Bubba.”
McDonald was 65 percent “Bubba” and 35 percent “Lauren” in high school. He was “Lauren” to the U.S. Air Force.
But in the South, “Bubba” is by definition a family man, an everyman. An average Joe. There are — or were — an army of Bubbas out there. So in politics, “Bubba” is — or was — good advertising.
But times change. McDonald remembered back to the time when he was PSC chairman, and he took a phone call from an angry constituent with — judging from McDonald’s imitation — a high-toned accent from parts north.
“I cahn’t believe the chahrman of the Public Service Commission is named Bubba,” she complained.
McDonald also watched Forsyth County, where he lived until a year or so ago, swell with people from the Midwest and the Northeast or even downtown Atlanta.
“And honestly, ‘Bubba’ may be a bit offensive to them,” he said.
McDonald, by the way, is a dapper fellow who doesn’t look a bit country and can discuss the workings of nuclear plants with a degree of proficiency.
The very fact that this must be said perhaps explains McDonald’s decision. The innocent name that sprang from the tongue-tied lips of toddler sisters has become something of a pejorative.
So “Bubba” will disappear from the ballot, as far as Lauren McDonald is concerned.
Last week did give us a 64-year-old Democrat, James A. “Bubber” Epps of Dry Branch, Ga., who will run against Republican incumbent Allen Freeman in House District 140.
But clearly, Bubba’s days are numbered.
That said, McDonald warns that if you see him on the street and call him Lauren, he may not turn his head.
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Newt Gingrich and Allan Crow on the implications of Louisiana
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On Saturday, Don Cazayoux became Louisiana’s newest Democratic congressman, wresting a seat that had been in Republican hands for 33 years.
In Washington and elsewhere, the defeat wiped off whatever smiles the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton fight has been putting on Republican faces.
The Louisiana result came on the heels of the Republican loss of former Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat in Illinois, which had been held by the GOP — with a single two-year exception — for 74 years.
That has Newt Gingrich calling for marked change of course for Republicans “or they are going to suffer decisive losses this November.”
Gingrich has this posted on the web site of Human Events:
Senator McCain is currently running ahead of the Republican congressional ballot by about 16 percentage points. But there are two reasons that this extraordinary personal achievement should not comfort congressional Republicans.
First, McCain’s lead is a sign of the gap between the McCain brand of independence and the GOP brand. No regular Republican would be tying or slightly beating the Democratic candidates in this atmosphere. It is a sign of how much McCain is a non-traditional Republican that he is sustaining his personal popularity despite his party’s collapse.
Second, there is a grave danger for the McCain campaign that, if the generic ballot stays at only 32 percent for the GOP, it will ultimately outweigh McCain’s personal appeal and drag his candidacy into defeat.
The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti- Reverend Wright, or (if Senator Clinton wins), anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail.
It’s worth noting that Atlanta consultant Allan Crow handled the media for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Louisiana.
National Democrats dropped $1 million plus on the Louisiana race, Crow said — twice what the candidate himself spent. National Republicans and various 527s spent a similar amount on Woody Jenkins.
This was the first attack ad in the race, and it could have implications elsewhere in the country. Even in Georgia.
Designed by Crow and launched close to April 15, the TV spot tied Jenkins’ failure to pay his taxes to his support for “a national sales tax” of 15 percent “on just about everything.”
That’s a reference to the Fair Tax, which has been embraced by many Republicans in the state. In Georgia, it might also apply to the property tax shift proposed this year by House Speaker Glenn Richardson.
“We found that it worked pretty well, particularly in the context of Woody not paying his taxes,” Crow said.
