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Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Updated: Who’s going to cast Georgia’s vote? It’s a secret
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Aaron Gould Sheinin asheinin@ajc.com
Minneapolis — When the roll call of the states happens late tonight, someone will announce how Georgia votes.
But who that is is a mystery. Or, better, it’s a secret.
State party director Ben Fry said just a few moments ago that they’re going to “just see what happens” at the roll call.
I’ve got one source telling me who it’s going to be, but won’t post it here without more confirmation. Feel free to speculate in the comments about who you think it might be, and what variation of “the great state of Georgia” will be used.
Before this week’s poll rankings came out, someone could have said, “home of the top-ranked Georgia Bulldogs.”
UPDATE: It was party chairwoman Sue Everhart, with Gov. Sonny Perdue standing right beside her.
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The difference between Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Tuesday night speech by U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, only eight years ago the Democratic nominee for vice-president, on behalf of Republican presidential pick John McCain brought up a half-dozen comparisons to Zell Miller’s role in the 2004 convention that nominated George W. Bush for a second term.
(Governor, if you’re reading this, we really did try to call you. Give a shout.)
The Los Angeles Times blog was most fulsome in drawing a comparison:
Miller took the stage at Madison Square Garden to launch a frontal assault on the Democratic nominee trying to deny President Bush reelection. He eviscerated Kerry’s voting record on defense systems, suggesting that if the senator from Massachusetts had his way, the U.S. military would be armed with spitballs.
Lieberman, by contrast, came to Minnesota more to praise John McCain than to attack Barack Obama. And for the voters both camps are targeting — independents — there’s a good chance Lieberman’s message will resonate more effectively.
At the least, it ought to lay the groundwork — if any was really needed — for Lieberman to land a high-ranking post in a McCain administration (after all, his welcome in the Democratic Senate caucus is bound to grow even more strained than it already is).
This is the key difference between Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller. The former Georgia senator, while vilified by his former Democratic colleagues since that address, has been warmly embraced by Republicans, here in Georgia and elsewhere.
For at the heart of Miller’s shift was a late-in-life religious transformation that included a new opposition to abortion. Republicans still seek his support — U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss being the latest.
But Lieberman has undergone no such conversion. His alliance is with McCain, not the Republican base. It’s a matter of friendship and foreign policy — and, as the Connecticut senator said last night, country over party.
David Yepsen wrote this for the Des Moines Register:
It took courage for Lieberman to deliver such a speech. His fellow Democrats in the Senate suffer him only because they need him to control the place. If Democrats make gains in the 2008 election, as seems likely, look for an effort to be made to strip Lieberman of his committee chairmanships.
While McCain likes Lieberman and may have even wanted to put him on the GOP ticket as his running mate, rank-and-file Republicans have made it clear that can’t stomach Lieberman’s left-of-center positions on social issues.
So what you saw Tuesday night was a courageous, politically homeless man giving an address that assures he’ll likely wander forever in the wilderness.
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An evangelical voice of, if not doubt, then caution when it comes to Sarah Palin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Throughout this afternoon and beyond her speech this evening, Republicans will be emphasizing their confidence in Gov. Sarah Palin as the GOP candidate for vice president.
Evangelicals have been especially supportive of the Alaskan governor, but not to a man.
Mark DeMoss, a Christian publicist with an office in Buford, was Mitt Romney’s liaison to Southern evangelicals during the Republican primary.
Steve Walden, editor-in-chief of Beliefnet, documents DeMoss’ qualms in a posting today:
Mark DeMoss, former chief of staff to Jerry Falwell and now a leading Christian public relations executive, is hoping that Palin turns out well but has been shocked and worried by the reflexive Christian embrace of her.
“Too many evangelicals and religious conservative are too preoccupied with values and faith and pay no attention to competence. We don’t apply this approach to anything else in life, including choosing a pastor.”
Imagine, he said, if a church was searching for a pastor and the leadership was brought a candidate with great values but little experience. “They’ve been a pastor for two years at a church with 150 people but he shares our values, so we hired him to be pastor of our 5,000-person church? It wouldn’t happen! We don’t say, ‘He shares our values, so let’s hire him.’ That’s absurd. Yet we apply that to choosing presidents. It blows my mind.”
….To be clear, DeMoss isn’t saying Palin is unqualified. “The reality is, we don’t know - and neither does McCain if he only met her once.” The other Christian leaders who rallied around her didn’t know much either. “I’m not hinting something’s amiss but we don’t know her and the people who gave her glowing response Friday didn’t know. The euphoric rush to anoint without knowing — it’s a dangerous thing.”
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Boortz not among those cutting Palin’s daughter any slack
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Most every conservative soul at the Republican National Convention has been in lockstep on the topic of Gov. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter: It’s the family’s business, a private matter. The less said the better.
But Neal Boortz apparently didn’t get the memo. The syndicated radio talk show host, based here in Atlanta at WSB Radio, spent the morning from his booth in St. Paul giving the young lady a very public spanking — not surprising when you remember that Boortz often rails against local teenage drivers when their cars go astray, doing injury to themselves and others.
Boortz’ focus was on a photo sent to him, featuring Palin’s daughter and her husband-to-be, wearing faux gang garb and sporting a half-gallon bottle of what appears to be whiskey.
Listen to the sound clip here. Here’s a sampling:
Boortz: Jamie [Dupree] sent me a picture last night of Sarah Palin’s daughter. Is she 16? She’s 17 now, isn’t she? And her boyfriend. And, oh, boy. From the looks of this picture you can only draw the conclusion that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is a twit. First of all, her boy friend — he’s wearing a do-rag, a little wannabe rapper. He’s wearing his do-rag, and then he’s got an oversized baseball hat on sideways.
Belinda Skelton: Holding a huge thing of liquor.
Boortz: Holding a gallon jug of some kind of — well, it ain’t iced tea. And it’s about two-thirds empty…..That picture will probably end up going everywhere, and it’s not going to help anybody.”
Photo credit: William Berry/AJC
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A Bob Barr sighting — inside the GOP convention
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This just showed up on a Reuters blog:
Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr has crashed the Republican convention.
Barr, a former Republican congressman now running for president on the Libertarian ticket, was spotted inside the Xcel Center on Wednesday morning, near the talk-radio jocks on “Radio Row.”
What was he doing here? How did he get in? What did he think of Sarah Palin?
Barr said it wasn’t a good time for questions.
“I have to visit the men’s room,” he told Reuters.
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Perdue: Dems say ‘Dang!’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Aaron Gould Sheinin asheinin@ajc.com
Minneapolis — Gov. Sonny Perdue said Wednesday that Sarah Palin’s selection as the GOP vice presidential nominee has made Democrats second-guess their own choice for president.
Speaking at the Georgia delegation’s breakfast meeting here, Perdue said the governor of Alaska was a great pick for GOP presidential hopeful John McCain.
“This is a woman that the more America knows of her, gets to know her, the better they’re going to like her, and boy the Democrats hate it,” Perdue said. “I talked about buyer’s remorse at the Democratic National Convention. You could see it, you could feel it. They chose the wrong candidate, and add Sarah Palin on top of that and they say, ‘Dang! They beat us to the punch.”
Perdue was speaking of Democrats’ selection of Barack Obama, and not Hillary Clinton, to be their nominee.
The governor said that Palin will help McCain, whom, Perdue admitted, “probably has offended all of us at one time with some of his decisions.”
Still, Perdue said, “he’s done what he thought was right.”
Perdue challenged delegates to help back up his own words from months ago about Obama competing to win Georgia.
“I wrote a check that I’m going to ask you to cover,” Perdue said. “I said, ‘Bring it on.’”
“Let Obama and Joe Biden come to Georgia, spend as much money as they want and have their say and we’re still just going to wax them,” he said. “So bring it on, bring it on and let’s go to work.”
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The Sarah Palin Chronicles: Part II
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On Day 3 of their national meeting in St. Paul, with her speech only hours away, Republicans insist that the media should treat GOP vice presidential pick Sarah Palin more gently. Like they treated Hillary Clinton.
— Former presidential candidate Fred Thompson, the TV actor and ex-senator from Tennessee, set the tone last night:
“Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit. Well, give me a tough Alaskan Governor who has taken on the political establishment in the largest state in the Union — and won — over the beltway business-as-usual crowd any day of the week.
“Let’s be clear … the selection of Governor Palin has the other side and their friends in the media in a state of panic. She is a courageous, successful, reformer, who is not afraid to take on the establishment.”
— In this piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, we learn that the man in charge withheld his charms from CNN because of its alleged rough treatment of Palin:
Republican presidential nominee John McCain abruptly canceled a scheduled appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live” Tuesday in retaliation for an earlier interview on the network, in which an anchor raised questions about vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s foreign policy credentials.
— And then the Washington Post had this:
Sen. John McCain’s top campaign strategist accused the news media Tuesday of being “on a mission to destroy” Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin by displaying “a level of viciousness and scurrilousness” in pursuing questions about her personal life.
In an extraordinary and emotional interview, Steve Schmidt said his campaign feels “under siege” by wave after wave of news inquiries that have questioned whether Palin is really the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whether her amniotic fluid had been tested and whether she would submit to a DNA test to establish the child’s parentage.
— Los Angeles Times outlines today’s talking points for Republicans:
With some GOP strategists worried that the Palin pick has undercut McCain’s argument that Obama is too inexperienced to be president, internal campaign talking points obtained Tuesday by The Times signal that Republicans will try to retake the experience argument — drawing a direct parallel between Palin and Democratic nominee Obama.
“Obama’s ‘experience’ is running for president,” read the talking points, distributed Tuesday to campaign surrogates who appear on radio and television talk shows. “Gov. Palin’s experience is bringing people together to get things done.”
Another document distributed to GOP delegates urges them to discuss Palin’s knowledge of energy issues as governor of an oil-producing state — and exhorts the delegates in their discussions of Palin: “STAY POSITIVE when talking to reporters.”
— Former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich didn’t observe the “stay positive” part, but he made all the other points in this MSNBC video below:
— Palin’s past support of Pat Buchanan’s presidential bid has made some Jewish leaders and supporters of Israel nervous. The Alaskan governor has been kept out of sight at the convention, but the Wall Street Journal noted this meeting on Tuesday:
She had private sessions with Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman and members of the pro-Israel group AIPAC, said people familiar with her schedule. An AIPAC spokesman said Gov. Palin told its members she would “work to expand and deepen the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Israel.”
— On the background front, the Washington Post reports that the veep-vetting process was more rushed than the McCain campaign has let on:
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was not subjected to a lengthy in-person background interview with the head of Sen. John McCain’s vice presidential vetting team until last Wednesday in Arizona, the day before McCain asked her to be his running mate, and she did not disclose the fact that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant until that meeting, two knowledgeable McCain officials acknowledged Tuesday.
— In a profile of her Christian-oriented term as mayor, the New York Times notes that family ties aren’t everything with the GOP candidate for vice president:
When Ms. Palin completed her second and final term, in 2002, her stepmother-in-law, Faye Palin, was running to succeed her. It seemed like a good idea, except that Faye Palin supported abortion rights and was registered as unaffiliated, not Republican, people who remember the race said. Sarah Palin sided instead with Dianne M. Keller, a religious conservative and an ally on the City Council. Ms. Keller won.
— This will endear her to the South: Quoting a 2006 opposition research report by Democrats, The Politico says that Palin once filed paperwork to start a consulting firm. She named it Rouge Cou. That’s French for “redneck,” she explained.
— And just because it seems more relevant now than it did two weeks ago, here’s a link to an Insider post from last month:
An Atlanta actuarial firm says both presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama “can reasonably be expected to serve two full terms in good health.”
But just barely.
The 30-year-old Bragg actuarial company, which specializes in morbidity and mortality calculations, gives 71-year-old McCain a “healthy expectancy” of 8.4 years, taking into account his four bouts with melanoma of the skin.
Barack Obama, who turned 47 [on Aug. 4], can expect 21.9 years of good health — a forecast shortened by 10 percent or so by his history of cigarette smoking.
Photo credit: Bloomberg News
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Busy day for Georgia GOP
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Aaron Gould Sheinin asheinin@ajc.com
Minneapolis — With the Republican National Convention back in full swing, Georgia’s GOP delegation has a busy day ahead.
Gov. Sonny Perdue and Secretary of State Karen Handel were both scheduled to speak to delegates and their breakfast coming up in about an hour. An update from federal officials follows.
State Sen. Judson Hill (R-Marietta) will be one of three panelists at 11 a.m. at a luncheon on health care sponsored by Congressional Quarterly. Hill will discuss strategies for helping the uninsured gain access to health care.
From 3 to 5 p.m. this afternoon, state party chairwoman Sue Everhart will be feted at a reception in her honor. (Incidentally, that reception is sponsored in part by Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine who has made clear his intention to run for governor in 2010.)
But the biggest event of the day will be the convention session, itself. It’ll be a long night. Unlike Democrats, who started their convention in Denver by 3:30 p.m. (that’s 5:30 in Atlanta) and were done by 9 p.m., Republicans choose to go into the night. Tonight’s session begins around 6 p.m. and will go past 10 p.m. again.
Look for the roar from the convention crowd when vice presidential pick Sarah Palin comes out to give her speech tonight. These delegates are jazzed for her.
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