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Monday, December 1, 2008
Sarah Palin: November election was the result of ‘frustration, disappointment’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
7 p.m.: Walked out of the Gwinnett auditorium with Tom Baxter, late of this page, who made this observation: That the thousands who attended the Sarah Palin/Saxby Chambliss rally were the most down-scale crowd he’s seen at a GOP event this year.
In other words, these were white, young blue-collar newcomers to the process.
“They’ve got no money,” Baxter noted. Three weeks ago, the Chambliss rally that featured John McCain in Cobb County drew a smaller and substantially different crowd — still white, but older and in business suits.
At the end of the 35-mile drive back to Atlanta, the Jim Martin rally at the state Capitol — featuring U.S. Rep. John Lewis and hip-hop star Ludacris — was just shutting down. Not as large a crowd as the Palin event, but close to a thousand, who gathered in the open on a cold, blustery night. So not a bad showing.
An emphasis on youth was the one thing both events had in common on Monday. We’ll see which side turns out.
4:50 p.m.: The biggest applause lines so far for Sarah Palin have been on abortion and the Second Amendment. She spoke about the remaking of the Republican party.
“”We recognize there was frustration, disappointment by the electorate,” Palin said. Palin promised a GOP that was both conservative and oriented to the American working class.
She just finished, with everyone again standing. All in all, the speech was very similar to the one she gave this morning. Palin goes from here to the National Governors Association meeting in Philadelphia, where the agenda includes a meeting with President-elect Barack Obama.
4:35 p.m.: Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and former GOP nominee for vice president, just got an extended standing ovation from a crowd of several thousand in the Gwinnett Center.
Palin said re-electing Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss, and denying Democrats a 60th vote in the Senate, was essential to “maintaining the checks and balances needed for our democracy.”
She mentioned that she had been here once before — a politician always likes to say, “It’s good to be back” — when her oldest son graduated from boot camp at Fort Benning. “Georgia, you took care of my boy, now he’s taking care of you,” she said.
On Chambliss: “Saxby’s not going to be an easy yes vote, but he’s not going to be an automatic no vote,” Palin said.
4:25 p.m.: The preacher has given the invocation. Among the gathering’s sins, he proclaims, is the “political correctness” to which many Americans have succumbed.
“We have broken your laws and called it tolerance,” he said. The preacher thanked God for the nation’s biblical foundations, and for the refusal by some to “to bow to modern idols.”
State Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine led the Pledge of Allegiance. U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson is introducing Saxby Chambliss now.
Chambliss campaign people say 20,000 people have seen Sarah Palin — who hasn’t appeared yet — during the day. Chambliss’ re-election is necessary, Isakson said, “to stop a runaway train.”
4:10 p.m.: Still waiting on Sarah Palin and Saxby Chambliss. But close to 60 people have been standing on the dais waiting for 40 minutes or so. It’s very clear that Georgia’s Republican leadership doesn’t mind being seen with her. Quite the opposite.
You may think that strange, but quite a few Georgia Republicans were more than cautious when it came to being seen with John McCain. Even last month, after he lost.
3:46 p.m.: Just so you realize that very little is impromptu in any campaign, the Insider just spotted an aide passing out a hand-painted “Palin-Chambliss 2012” sign.
This event isn’t far from Ralph Reed’s office in Duluth. He’s here, too. Along with many state lawmakers from Cobb, north Fulton and Gwinnett counties, too. And Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren.
More hand-crafted signs. “Read my lipstick. Vote Sax.” No porcine references.
3:35 p.m.: Runoff? What runoff?
Oh, the Saxby Chambliss signs are plentiful, but it’s clear even before you walk in that this is a Sarah Palin for President event, four years ahead of its time.
Several thousand people are already here at the Gwinnett Center, a majority grouped in front into one large mosh pit.
A decidedly younger crowd than Republicans usually draw to the events like this, and the music is less twangy as well. More rock than country, and many young ladies with tiaras and beauty contest ribbons.
A Chambliss spokeswoman says the press will have to be satisfied with the stump speech that the governor of Alaska will give here — no separate press availability, where news is more likely to be made.
Three previous speeches — in Augusta, Savannah and Perry — have all been similar. The main theme that Palin has used thus far: That the national GOP needs to be rebuilt, and this is the place to start.
Dozens of people are now packing the stage. Lauren “Bubba” McDonald, a Public Service Commission candidate also in tomorrow’s runoff, has positioned himself so that any straight-on camera that captures Palin will include him in the background.
AJC photo credits: Mikki K. Harris at Martin rally, Jason Getz at Chambliss rally
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A second, last-day poll puts Chambliss ahead of Martin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This evening, a second, last-day poll — this one commissioned by WSB-TV — put Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss ahead of Democrat Jim Martin in the U.S. Senate runoff.
The final 12 hours of voting resume at 7 a.m. Tuesday.
The WSB-TV poll, conducted by Insider/Advantage, says Chambliss leads Martin, 50 to 46 percent. The poll was conducted Sunday among 744 likely voters, and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
“The race will turn on whether the tradition of Republicans returning to the polls in greater numbers than Democrats in runoff elections will prevail, or whether the almost 1 million automated phone calls by Barack Obama to African-American and longtime Democratic voters will somehow motivate Democrats to return to the polls,” said Matt Towery, CEO of Insider/Advantage.
Earlier Monday, Public Policy Polling of North Carolina issued a poll that showed Chambliss with a slightly wider margin, leading 53 to 46 percent. See the details here.
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Poll: Chambliss with ‘solid’ lead, but…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Public Policy Polling of North Carolina has released a final poll of the U.S. Senate runoff, giving Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss a “solid” 53 percent lead over Democrat Jim Martin, who weighs in at 46 percent.
But PPP also attaches a caveat.
The survey of 1,276 likely voters was conducted Nov. 29 and 30, and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 2.7 percent.
Here are two cogent paragraphs from the PPP analysis:
Chambliss is up 71-28 on Jim Martin with whites. For Martin to win the runoff with that performance, the electorate would have to be 34% African American. Given that it was only 30% for the general election with Barack Obama at the top of the ballot and that early voting was less than 23% black, that does not seem particularly likely….
Martin leads with voters under 45, but trails 68-31 with voters over 65. Senior citizens are the most reliable group of voters and likely to make up a larger portion of the electorate than they did on November 4th for this comparatively low interest election. That’s just one more hurdle to climb for the Democratic challenger.
But here’s a statement that Tom Jensen, communications director for PPP, posted on the firm’s blog, noting the difficulty of polling a post-holiday runoff:
So we have data from the poll this weekend suggesting black turnout could be as high as 33-34% and turnout from early voting suggesting it could be as low as 23-24%.
Our poll the previous weekend, not over the holiday, looked like blacks would make up 27-29% of the electorate and we’re sticking with that for our projection.
But because we’ve seen evidence to the contrary in either direction, really nothing between a 2-point Martin victory and a 16-point Chambliss victory would absolutely shock me. That’s just the nature of the uncertainly with an election like this.
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Congratulations. It’s a recession
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The National Bureau of Economic Research just pronounced the United States economy to be in recession, and has been for about a year.
Read the bureau’s entire statement here. But this is the gist:
The committee identified December 2007 as the peak month, after determining that the subsequent decline in economic activity was large enough to qualify as a recession.
Payroll employment, the number of filled jobs in the economy based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ large survey of employers, reached a peak in December 2007 and has declined in every month since then.
An alternative measure of employment, measured by the BLS’s household survey, reached a peak in November 2007, declined early in 2008, expanded temporarily in April to a level below its November 2007 peak, and has declined in every month since April 2008.
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Palin in 2012: So far, a GOP star without a center
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin just finished her first stop in Georgia, with a sizeable rally in Augusta.
So says my AJC colleague Jim Tharpe, who’s on the ground there:
Palin cast the race Monday as the first step for Republicans to rebuild their party. “It takes rebuilding, and I say, let that begin here in Georgia tomorrow,” Palin said.
Obviously, the national media is paying more attention to Palin than to Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss, who faces Democrat Jim Martin in the U.S. Senate runoff.
Here’s a take on 2012 from Politico:
Palin is atop a field of ten Republicans in a hypothetical 2012 matchup, including 2008 primary candidates Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, according to a recent Gallup poll of Republican voters.
Fully two thirds of Republicans, including Republican-leaning independents, want Palin to run for president in 2012, twice as many as back Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who has already made one post-election visit to Iowa, and about 20 points ahead of former Speaker Newt Gingrich.
But even as Palin exploded over a few weeks from relative obscurity to a bigger star within the party than its own presidential nominee, Democrats and independents quickly soured on her, she became one of the most divisive figures in politics.
In mid-November, Gallup found that only 45 percent of Americans hoped Palin is “a major national political figure for many years to come.” About three-quarters of Republicans hoped so, three-quarters of Democrats hoped not, as did 53 percent of independents.
Exit polls also showed that 64 percent of independents viewed Palin as unqualified to be president, with nine of ten Democrats and one in four Republicans agreeing.
“Palin’s image, being the way it is for independents, puts her at a distinct disadvantage from a general election standpoint,” said Tony Fabrizio, a veteran GOP strategist. “But it wouldn’t be the first time the hard-core base ran off the cliff.”
The GOP intra-party debate over Palin has become a proxy for the larger question of her party’s future, and conservative chieftains like Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Richard Land fear that attacks on Palin are at times veiled swipes at the party base.
“It would be a mistake to say that social conservatives have all their hopes and dreams vested in Sarah Palin,” Land said, but he added Palin “does have the one thing you can’t coach, charisma,” and continues to have “star power” with conservatives.
She has less, though, among moderates even in her own party. Among moderate and liberal Republicans, Palin dropped about 20 points, falling behind Romney as the group’s preferred 2012 nominee.
Conservatives still dominate the GOP primary process, and in key primary states like Iowa and South Carolina about six in ten GOP voters are also white evangelicals, who overwhelmingly support Palin.
