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Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Paul Broun, his primary scare behind him, declares that debates are so 2007ish
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Looks like U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Athens) has decided he’d rather not talk about his office budget.
The following has been posted on the web site of WGAU(1340AM) in Athens, says radio host Tim Bryant:
A spokesperson for the campaign of Congressman Paul Broun Jr. says the 10th District Republican will not take part in any local debates.
The Athens Press Club — comprised of News-Talk 1340 WGAU, The Athens Banner-Herald, and Flagpole Magazine — had been working to organize a forum with Rep. Broun and his challenger, Jackson County Democrat Bobby Saxon.
Broun campaign spokesperson Jessica Morris tells WGAU that not only will the congressman not participate in an Athens Press Club event, he will not participate in any debates in his hometown of Athens.
Broun won a narrow victory in last year’s special election after criticizing his runoff opponent, Columbia County State Senator Jim Whitehead, for his decision to duck debates in Athens.
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Gingrich on oil and energy: ‘We fundamentally changed the national debate’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Exactly one year ago, Newt Gingrich was mulling over the possibility of a Republican run for the White House.
On Wednesday morning, Gingrich celebrated the fact that, in his own small way, he had given GOP nominee John McCain the summer-time tool he needed to claw his way back into the presidential contest.
No, not Sarah Palin. Gingrich was pushing Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal harder.
It was oil. “Drill here, drill now.” “Drill, baby, drill.” That club.
Said Gingrich:
“We launched ‘Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less’ on May 14. By June 20, we had fundamentally changed the national debate.”
A book coming out later this month will allow him to continue to stoke the issue. So does he take credit for McCain’s resurgence? Answered Gingrich:
“I wouldn’t put it that way. I’d give McCain credit for figuring out it would work. And for being prepared to look at reality. As he has said, people at $4 a gallon have a different attitude than people at $1.50 a gallon. Energy suddenly became a bigger deal and a more important topic….
“It’s a little bit like being the general manager or coach of a sporting team. I’m not on the field. I’m not out there, all day, playing. What we can do is we can develop better plays, we can show people the scouting report of where the American people are.”
The “we” in Gingrich’s answer is American Solutions, his organization, a 527, that he says is dedicated to generating “tripartisan” discussions on the big issues — energy, health care, the budget.
Gingrich had a series of Solution Day seminars in Georgia this time last year. He has another set planned for Saturday, Sept. 27. The locale again will be the Cobb Galleria, but you can also catch it on the Internet — where it will be simulcast in Spanish — or on satellite TV.
Readers are free to decide for themselves whether Gingrich’s operation is genuinely non-partisan, or a thinly veiled GOP think-tank.
But you cannot question Gingrich’s ambition. The job of American Solutions, the former Georgia congressman said, is merely to
“…create a framework of solutions large enough to enable the United States to be successful of the next 25 to 30 years….
“It starts with the premise that existing institutions — litigation, regulation, education, taxation, health, energy and infrastructure — are not capable of competing with China and India as they evolve.”
Other topics naturally came up. Gingrich’s thoughts on pigs, lipstick, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears have been posted here.
In response to questions, Gingrich also said that the Obama campaign made two serious mistakes this summer, largely out of a sense of hubris. First, Obama failed to name Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential partner:
“Frankly, you probably wouldn’t have gotten Governor Palin as the vice presidential nominee because it would have been impossible for her to compete with a vice presidential Hillary Clinton.”
Then there was the European leg of Obama’s overseas venture:
“He goes to Berlin and tells 200,000 Germans he’s a citizen of the world. Almost no Americans wake up and say, ‘I want my commander-in-chief to be a citizen of the world. They want him to be an American. They gave nationalism to McCain in that one sentence.”
Gingrich had this to say about Obama in Georgia:
”When they were at their hubritic, most excited, they were going to compete everywhere. They were in Montana, they were in — I think they opened four offices in North Dakota. They’re in Virginia, they’re going to go everywhere.
“Well, it turns out in the real world, as the tide starts to recede, they’re not going to carry Georgia. It’s just not going to happen. Governor Perdue, Saxby Chambliss, the Republican organization are going to carry Georgia…
“They’re not going to carry Florida. [U.S. Sen. Joe] Lieberman’s entire speech was about one thing: Fort Lauderdale. And Lieberman has been campaigning in Fort Lauderdale.
“This is goofy, because if they’d never come into Georgia to start with, they wouldn’t be pulling out. So you wouldn’t have this sense of the declining Obama campaign.”
And what about Sarah Pailin, the governor of Alaska?
“I underestimated her dramatically. I was for her, I was excited, I was thrilled that Friday. She is so much better than I expected. She is so much more charismatic….
“She can go to any campus and compete head-to-head with Obama now. She’s as exciting, as interesting as Obama is.”
But he is worried about the vice presidential debate with U.S. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. “I’m concerned. She cannot beat Biden so badly that she generates sympathy for him,” Gingrich said.
All jokes aside, the former U.S. House speaker seriously questioned the “Gang of Ten” initiative, backed by Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, both Republicans, to push through a bipartisan energy bill.
As described by Chambliss, environmental initiatives would be funded by rescinding tax credits currently enjoyed by oil companies.
Said Gingrich:
”I was very disappointed in that bill. It doesn’t provide for serious drilling for anywhere except the Gulf of Mexico. And it has a huge tax increase, which is totally unnecessary….
“Other than appeasing a bunch of Democrats who are passionate to raise taxes, I don’t understand why the ‘Gang of Ten’ has a tax increase. It’s unnecessary, it is destructive in this economy, and it’s a fundamental violation of McCain’s position, which is not to raise taxes…
“Sometimes if you get in a room and begin chanting bipartisan, you adopt two or three really dumb ideas because that makes you bipartisan. I think being destructive in a bipartisan way isn’t particularly helpful.”
Photo credit: Associated Press
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Newt Gingrich: On pigs, lipstick, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich had a session with local reporters this morning.
More details will be posted later, but since lipstick and pigs seem to be the topic of the day, here’s what Gingrich had to say about it — as part of a larger discussion about the tone of the presidential campaign:
“My personal guess is, for example, that [Barack] Obama probably wasn’t referring directly to [Sarah] Palin. He was referring to McCain’s policies. But that Palin’s use of the hockey mom-pittbull story had lodged in the back of his head the lipstick idea.
“And it surfaced in a way that’s now gotten him 24 hours of really dumb — I watched last night at one point on [Fox News’] ‘Hannity and Colmes.’ When you have a 12-minute debate over whether lipstick on a pig refers to a demeaning comment about the vice presidential candidate, you know we’re not talking about health reform, we’re not talking about energy policy, we’re not talking about balancing the budget.
“And you know, it’s fairly stupid. And I give the news media a fair amount of credit for this…
Yet Gingrich was willing to cut at least one presidential candidate some slack when it comes to putting the feed down low enough so that the goats can get at it.
He continued:
“On the other hand, the candidates are going to respond to market realities. It’s a market reality that the 30-second McCain commercial with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears stopped the Obama campaign in its tracks. That it somehow magically caught, in a very common cultural phenomenon, an instinct people had.
“I would have, frankly, tried to elevate the debate, because I think you can beat Obama on big issues rather than clever gimmicks. But it was a gimmick that clearly, literally, stopped the momentum of the campaign. And they’ve never fully recovered from it.”
Photo credit: Associated Press
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Cagle files his paperwork for the 2010 race for governor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle has just become the second Republican to enter the 2010 race for governor. And the 2009 session of the state Legislature has just gotten a tad more complicated.
Cagle joins fellow GOPer John Oxendine, the state insurance commissioner, and David Poythress, a Democrat and former adjutant general.
My friend Harris Blackwood over at the Gainesville Times got the first word from Cagle:
The Chestnut Mountain Republican announced formation of an exploratory campaign committee and began the process that will allow him to accept campaign contributions.
In deference to the current state budget crisis, Cagle quietly shared his decision with his hometown newspaper, The Times.
“I am strongly considering a run for governor in 2010, and today we filed paperwork to begin that process by forming an exploratory committee,” Cagle said. “We did this in order to ensure every step we take is fully in compliance with the campaign disclosure requirements of Georgia law. In the months between now and the legislative session, our steering committee will be actively working to build a sound financial and organizational footing for future campaigns.”
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Allen Buckley: Saxby Chambliss has put a cap on debates
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Allen Buckley, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate, is a bit ticked off.
You’ll recall that, on Aug. 5, the day of the Democratic run-off vote, Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss invited Buckley and that Tuesday’s victor to a series of debates.(Read the invitation here)
The three camps met late last night, to discuss a schedule. A representative for Democrat Jim Martin suggested weekly debates, either here or in Washington — the latter location to fit Chambliss’ schedule.
Eight to 10 meetings, in other words. See the Martin proposal here.
Buckley said there was an agreement. But it looks like Chambliss has put the cap at five debates. Here’s the Chambliss response. It lists the debates in which the Chambliss campaign is willing to participate.
Buckley is calling foul. This is his account, put forward in a press release:
On the morning of Friday, August 22, 2008, Brian Jackson, campaign manager for the Buckley for Senate campaign, met with Ellery Gould and Justin Tomczak, the campaign managers for the Martin and Chambliss campaigns, respectively.
Ellery Gould proposed weekly debates starting immediately, running through the election providing for a minimum of eight to ten debates.
Subject to hammering out details, an agreement was reached that additional debates should be held, preferably weekly, providing eight to ten debates; to include three previously scheduled: the Perry Fair, GPTV/Atlanta Press Club and Fox 5 News.
Brian Jackson said: “I left the meeting with the understanding that we had agreed upon several additional debates, with only the details to be worked out. To accommodate Mr. Chambliss, we’d even discussed having one or more debates in Washington D.C., if his schedule would not allow this many debates in Georgia.”
…A week after the August 22nd meeting, Justin Tomczak of the Chambliss campaign sent an email to Mr. Gould and Mr. Jackson, confirming only the events that had already been booked, and speaking generically about events “we will also consider” in the future.
Further attempts by Brian Jackson to clarify which events, or to schedule additional events have not garnered any concrete dates, events or even a date to discuss additional events. With the election now less than two months away, this series of delays represent a retraction of the eight to ten (or weekly) debate agreement….
It is clear that the email from Mr. Tomczak has the objective of minimizing debates. This action is inconsistent with the previously alleged desire of Mr. Chambliss to debate, because debates are “a crucial part of the process”by which Georgians can distinguish their United States Senator from the other candidates.”
Buckley said: “Saxby is running from his record.
“His goal is clear: to minimize debates and blast the airwaves from now until the election with commercials stating that he ‘represents our conservative values.’ He doesn’t represent my values. Let’s debate as much as possible. I ask the media to help schedule debates.”
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