Home > Political Insider > Archives > 2008 > November > 12
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Saxby Chambliss says he’d vote to expel Alaska senator, and Sarah Palin may be ready to replace him
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Saxby Chambliss said Wednesday that he’ll vote to expel Republican colleague Ted Stevens, should the long-time Alaskan senator win his re-election bid.
Stevens was convicted of seven felony counts last month related to the failure to report gifts from lobbyists. He is leading narrowly in his re-election bid but has not officially been declared the winner of a seventh full Senate term.
“First of all, I hope Senator Stevens is successful in being re-elected. And assuming that he is, I intend to support any motion to remove him,” Chambliss said during a press conference with John Ensign of Nevada, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina has served notice that he’ll seek to expel Stevens from the Senate Republican Conference at a meeting next Tuesday.
While Ensign said that he, too, would vote to expel Stevens from the GOP circle — a move that would foreshadow expulsion by the entire Senate — the Nevada senator counseled waiting to see whether Stevens wins his race.
“If he actually wins the election, then you have to expel him twice. And so it’s probably better to let Alaska — it’s probably going to take a while to count all the votes up there — let that take place, then after the first of the year deal with it,” Ensign said.
Expulsion or, more likely, a resignation would trigger a 90-day special election to replace him, Ensign said. It would also give Republicans a chance to keep the seat out of Democratic hands.
Gov. Sarah Palin, the former GOP vice presidential candidate, has been mentioned as a candidate if Stevens leaves or is ousted. And just by coincidence, she was interviewed this afternoon on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”
In the interview, which airs at 9 p.m. tonight, King asked Palin if she intends to finish out her term. ” I will do what the people of Alaska want me to do,” Palin replied. “If they call an audible on me, and if they say they want me in another position, I’m going to do it.”
Permalink | Comments (46) | Post your comment |
DSCC ads to hit Atlanta airwaves, greet John McCain
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We hear that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has re-joined the contest on behalf of U.S. Senate runoff candidate Jim Martin, with a five-day TV buy in metro Atlanta that’s to start Thursday.
No video has been associated with the purchase — yet.
But the ad buy seems timed to dilute televised images of former Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who comes to Atlanta tomorrow on behalf of Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Post your comment |
On Thursday, no more President Bush
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Associated Press, which provides much political coverage for the AJC and news outlets throughout the country, is making a very minor change that’s likely to catch your eye — or ear.
As of 3 a.m. Thursday, AP will begin referring to the president of the United States — and the president-elect — by their full names.
In other words, President George W. Bush. And President-elect Barack Obama.
No political statement is intended.
For decades, since Franklin Roosevelt lived in the White House, it’s been AP “style” to refer to the president by his last name only: i.e., President Bush — whether No. 41 or No. 43.
The news cooperative isn’t exactly sure why it was adopted, but the practice was only applied within the United States. Heads of states in other countries are addressed by their full names. So is the president of the United States — but only in articles filed from overseas, headed for other countries.
“We saw a need to standardize how we refer to the president, especially since the wire now services more of a global audience,” explained Darrell Christian, AP editor at large and co-editor of the AP stylebook.
Permalink | Comments (20) | Post your comment |
A Democratic attempt to create some rain for the McCain appearance
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Democrats are out to make the Thursday appearance of John McCain for Saxby Chambliss as awkward as possible.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is passing around a 50-second web-only ad intended to remind viewers of the reaction by the former GOP presidential candidate reaction to a Chambliss TV ad that had helped the Republican oust U.S. Sen. Max Cleland.
“I’d never seen anything like that ad. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield — it’s worse than disgraceful. It’s reprehensible,” the ad quotes McCain as saying on CNN in 2003, a year after the election.
See the ad below.
But if you expect McCain to repeat himself, keep in mind that the Arizona senator owes his Georgia colleague. Both Chambliss and Johnny Isakson stepped out on a pretty thin limb just last February, when they put their names behind McCain’s presidential campaign — while the majority of other Republican heavyweights in the state went elsewhere or stayed on the sidelines. Yes, Georgia Republicans went for Mike Huckabee — but a debt is a debt.
As a matter of fact, the McCain event will be in the same facility where Chambliss and Isakson gave their presidential endorsements.
Meanwhile, Chambliss is having a media-heavy day: A morning radio interview with WBMQ in Savannah; “Fox and Friends” afterwards, a studio appearance with Neal Boortz on WSB, with a Glenn Beck appearance and a press conference in the offing.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment |
House chairman: Trim back early voting and the 50 percent rule
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Another Republican voice now says early voting should be cut back — and that perhaps a state law that demands election victors to win by a 50-percent-plus-one margin isn’t such a good thing after all.
The Associated Press this morning quotes state Rep. Austin Scott (R-Tifton), chairman of the House Governmental Affairs Committee, as saying that changes to state election law are likely to come with the winter session of the Legislature.
State Senate leaders, also Republican, have already voiced their concern with the implications of early voting, but hadn’t mentioned changing the threshold needed to win elections.
Wrote AP:
State Rep. Austin Scott said he expects legislators to discuss tightening runoff guidelines in the wake of the surprising showing by Democrat Jim Martin that forced a Dec. 2 showdown with Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss.
He also said he was considering whether to draft a measure that would shorten Georgia’s 45-day advance voting period.
“Most people think it was stretched out too far,” said Scott, a Tifton Republican who chairs the House committee charged with drafting electoral policy. “Maybe two weeks would be long enough.”
….Scott said the six-week advance period also could expose the system to more voter fraud, and he said legislators could limit potential abuse by tightening early voting.
“The two goals of the election are access and integrity,” he said. “And reaching that balance is sometimes easier said than done.”
Republicans also could overhaul election rules that now require a runoff if none of the candidates earn more than 50 percent of the vote.
Scott and a slew of House Republican leaders unsuccessfully proposed lowering the bar to 45 percent last year, and he said the provision could resurface from legislators concerned about the mounting costs of runoffs.
Statewide runoffs have cost tens of thousands of dollars in the past, and the Dec. 2 contest could top $100,000.
“The counties have asked for that 45 percent threshold because of the cost of elections,” Scott said.
Permalink | Comments (19) | Post your comment |
Obama team confirms Nunn’s role as defense advisor on transition
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A spokeswoman for Barack Obama this morning confirmed that former Georgia senator Sam Nunn will have a key role in the shift to a new administration, but said that a report that he would oversee a Pentagon transition team was overstated.
“Senator Sam Nunn will play an informal senior advisor role throughout the defense transition process. His expertise and the respect he has earned will be invaluable to ensure a smooth transition,” said transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter. But he won’t be paid, and won’t have a formal position on a Pentagon transition team, as the AP reported.
The Associated Press article also said Warren Christopher, the former secretary of state under President Clinton, would also be a leader in the switch of administrations.
“However, he is not playing a role in the transition process,” Cutter said. “There’s a lot of disinformation out there. We’re working hard to put the agency review teams together and expect they’ll be announced this week and inside the agencies by the end of the week.”
Whether formal or informal, paid or unpaid, it’s clear that Nunn will be a significant part of the transition process on defense and national security matters. Not a suprise, given that Nunn appeared at Obama’s side during a Virginia press conference, a week or so before the election.
Here’s a quick review of what Nunn’s involvement might mean:
— First, what it doesn’t say that Obama has named a secretary of defense. On the eve of the presidential election, from the King & Spalding office in Atlanta, Nunn declared himself uninterested in any cabinet position or permanent post in government. There’s no reason to disbelieve him, and his background role in the transition reinforces this. But Nunn is a reassuring figure to those in the Pentagon who don’t know what a Barack Obama administration might bring.
— In Nunn, you get a defense expert — the former head of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee — who’s expressed skepticism about the ramping up of hostilities toward Russia, and NATO’s extension of mutual defense membership to countries like Poland and Ukraine on the Russian border. NATO, Nunn has said, should be wary about making promises it can’t keep — not when its own defense forces are busy in Afghanistan.
“We need to understand that when you make military commitments, you’ve got to back it up with military capability,” Nunn said three months ago. “And right now, NATO is in danger of turning itself into a political organization rather than an effective military organization, and making political commitments which cannot be backed up with current forces.”
— Included in Nunn’s concerns about Russia is that country’s reaction to Eastern Europe as a platform for a U.S. missile defense system. “For us to deploy a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland - the system itself is not yet mature, and the Iranian threat is not yet mature. So we’ve got some time. Russia offered their territory, and it seems to me we ought to be working with Russia on missile defense,” Nunn said in the same interview.
— Though he did not often speak of it publicly, Nunn was highly critical of the U.S. decision to invade Iraq. (As a senator, he voted against the first Gulf War.) The former senator has blamed President Bush’s go-it-alone policy in Iraq for the souring of diplomatic relations on a number of other, perhaps more important fronts.
Like Obama, he has said that the U.S. needs to renew its emphasis on diplomacy. “Although it’s really not accurate, we’ve given the impression in the world that the military is our primary and only tool. And the military are the first ones to say that we can’t be the only tool. There has to be a whole array of tools in the arsenal, ” Nunn said last year.
At the same time, Nunn has not advocated an immediate skedaddling — to use a technical phrase — out of Iraq, if only for logistical reasons. “We have something like 44,000 track vehicles over there. It would take, probably, 12 months —- nothing but flying C-17s and other cargo aircraft back and forth to get them out, ” he said.
— During the debate over running mates this summer, gay groups targeted Nunn for his support of the U.S. military’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy that permits gays to serve — as long as they keep their sexual orientation a secret.
Barack Obama’s involvement of Nunn in the transition of the nation’s military command would seem to be, if not a dismissal of this objection, then a recognition that — in the face of two wars on the other side of the globe — that open service by gays and lesbians may not be an immediate priority.
Remember that the topic of gays in the military was the first fight picked by Bill Clinton when he assumed the presidency in 1992. Earlier this year, Nunn said “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” deserves another look, but said any change in policy should bubble up from within the Pentagon.
Photo credit: Associated Press
Services »
