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Monday, May 12, 2008
Allen Buckley, the Libertarian for Senate, and a conspiracy of events
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bob Barr has created a decent excuse to discuss another candidate of the same persuasion.
Allen Buckley, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate, called a telephone press conference last Thursday, to condemn incumbent Saxby Chambliss for acting as the Republican champion of the farm subsidy bill.
Nobody phoned in.
In a year in which Democrats are floundering and Chambliss has raised a pile of cash to defend himself, it’d be easy to write Buckley off.
But there’s a conspiracy of events out there that could — despite the traditional third-party disadvantage of no money and less attention — allow Buckley to make the best showing any Libertarian has ever made in Georgia.
First, some quick background about Buckley — and yes, he’s got every ounce of charisma you might expect from an attorney/CPA who specializes in employee benefits and tax law.
As stated above, Buckley’s going after Chambliss for his support of the farm bill. Record farm profits were recorded for 2007, Buckley notes, and 2008 is expected to be even better. As some Democrats have also pointed out, Chambliss’ political campaigns have gathered up more than $1 million from agricultural interests.
“It’s one thing to charge people who drive and use the roads 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline, and quite another thing to force people to pay tax to make rich people richer,” Buckley was prepared to say during that press conference. “If Saxby Chambliss is a ‘conservative,’ then the definition needs to be changed.”
Buckley has also gone after the Fair Tax in exhaustive detail. Simply put, he refers to this variation of a national consumption tax as a “fraud” that would penalize the middle class and serve as a boon to the wealthy.
“The Fair Tax proposal amounts to a vote buy. Presumably, the politicians pressing for it know that the numbers do not work,” Buckley has written.
Buckley drew 3.6 percent of the vote in 2006 as a candidate for lieutenant governor. Democrat Jim Martin, who is in the same race with Buckley this year as well, took 42 percent of the vote. In 2004, in another U.S. Senate race, Buckley scored 2 percent.
Why might Buckley do better this year? This is based on two conversations I had this afternoon. One was with Joe McCutchen of Ellijay, a Republican who publishes a political newsletter and frequently holds forth against excessive government spending.
McCutchen is seething over Chambliss’ support of the farm subsidy bill. “Saxby shouldn’t have voted like that. I’ve never been so angry in my life,” he said. McCutchen says he’ll be voting for Buckley, and his urging his friends up in north Georgia to do likewise.
How big a splinter group does McCutchen represent? This week’s state GOP convention in Columbus could show us. Chambliss didn’t do so well among hardliners last year when immigration was the issue.
My second conversation was with Amy Morton, the Democratic activist and blogger down in Macon. Morton supports Martin in the Democratic race for U.S. Senate. The question was simple: If Vernon Jones is the Democratic nominee, would she vote for the DeKalb County CEO or Chambliss in November?
After a long pause, Morton said she’d probably vote Democratic. “I’d vote for Vernon, but it would not be with any enthusiasm.”
Morton said her party loyalty would keep her from wandering. “I’m the exception. I think there are a lot of Democrats who won’t vote for Vernon,” she said. Many of them — especially if they still harbor a grudge against Chambliss for his 2002 ads against Max Cleland — might pick Buckley in protest, she admitted.
Several “ifs” have to be settled yet, but if a disaffected right unites with a disaffected left, Buckley could find himself with more than 3.6 percent of the vote.
Photo credit: Rich Addicks/AJC
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Bob Barr jumps into the presidential race, but keep an eye on Ron Paul
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So now we know that Bob Barr is running for president.
First, we’ll have to wait and see if he wins the Libertarian party’s nomination. The Denver convention runs May 22 to 26.
A few, including Newt Gingrich, are already calling Barr a Republican spoiler. “Bob Barr will make it marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president. That outcome threatens every libertarian value Barr professes to champion,” Gingich says in today’s Washington Times.
But if Barr is a spoiler, he isn’t the only one. The L.A. Times political blog, Top of the Ticket, says this:
”Quietly, largely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in Minnesota at the beginning of September.”
No word on exactly how they might embarrass McCain — whether through a demonstration, work stoppage, or simply tricking the nominee into a pair of mismatched socks.
But if any of you Paulites want to confess a detail or two, please give a call.
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Barack Obama and ‘symbolic racism’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Alan Abramowitz, the Emory University political scientist, had an op-ed piece in Sunday’s Washington Post in which he argues that the resistance of white Democrats to Barack Obama “remains a serious threat to his chances in November.”
Read the entire article here. But this is the heart of his argument:
”Racial attitudes have changed dramatically in the United States over the past several decades, of course, and overtly racist beliefs are much less prevalent among white Americans of all classes today. But a more subtle form of prejudice, which social scientists sometimes call symbolic racism, is still out there — especially among working-class whites.
“Symbolic racism means believing that African American poverty and other problems are largely the result of lack of ambition and effort, rather than white racism and discrimination. Who holds symbolically racist beliefs? A relatively large portion of white voters in general and white working-class voters in particular, according to the 2004 American National Election Study, the best data available on this topic.”
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Morning polls on the Democratic race for Senate, GOP maneuverings for governor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Matt Towery’s InsiderAdvantage has done some overnight polling on the Democratic race for the U.S. Senate and the Republican side of a budding 2010 race for governor.
MOE for the 400-respondent survey is 5 percent. Towery’s Democratic numbers show all the candidates have much work to do, even though they have little money to do it: Vernon Jones, 21 percent; Dale Cardwell, 14 percent; Josh Lanier, 5 percent; Jim Martin, 3 percent; Rand Knight, 1 percent, and undecided, 56 percent.
According to Towery, if the 2010 GOP primary for governor were held today, undecided, at 41 percent, would walk into a runoff with Casey Cagle or John Oxendine, both at 17 percent.
As for the others, Jack Kingston stands at 10 percent, Karen Handel at 7 percent, Lynn Westmoreland at 6 percent, and Jerry Keen at 2 percent.
