A curious thing happened after the news of Secretary of State Brian Kemp's embarrassing data breach emerged: There was no circling of the wagons, no statements of support from his fellow Republican comrades.
Yes, it's not an election year, so the comparison is imperfect. But there was an outpouring of GOP sympathy last year after Gov. Nathan Deal was socked by ethics allegations. Still, the lack of backup for a statewide Republican official seen as a 2018 gubernatorial contender is surprising.
There was nary a word of defense by Deal's office - which declined to comment on the breach - or any other Republican poobahs. The Georgia GOP, whose officers have close ties to Kemp, has also held its fire.
One of the only public responses from a high-ranking Republican came from U.S. Rep. Doug Collins - and it wasn't exactly a show of support. Said Collins:
"The ability to participate in elections freely and without fear of harm is one of the fundamental rights protected by our Constitution. It is my hope that the Secretary of State's office restores the trust of Georgia voters, and takes the necessary steps to ensure such a data breach never occurs again."
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The Washington-based publication Morning Consult has conducted opinion surveys of governors in all 50 states, finding that Nathan Deal has the backing of 57 percent of Georgians.
That makes Deal tied for 22nd most popular governor in the country with a trio of Democrats: California's Jerry Brown, New Hampshire's Maggie Hassan and Kentucky's Steve Beshear.
The country's most popular governor, according to the survey: Massachusetts Republican Charlie Baker, at 74 percent. The least popular is Kansas Republican Sam Brownback at 26 percent.
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In today's premium edition, we delve into the bipartisan backing in the House for a temporary halt to refugees from Iraq and Syria. Among the aisle-crossing Democrats was Atlanta's David Scott.
A member of the NATO parliamentary assembly, Scott often takes a more hawkish view than some of his Democratic colleagues. He had some pretty harsh words Thursday for President Barack Obama's ISIS strategy, saying the president lacked "backbone." Here is the full quote from a chat with a couple of reporters, including one of your Insiders:
"And here is the rubber stamp on that: 9/11, when we were attacked by terrorists, we invoked Article 5, and France led the way with all the other NATO nations to come to our aid. Don't you think we ought to at least do the same that people did when we were attacked? And I hope this president, when the president of France comes over here, he needs to leave with Article 5 in his hand. He stood with us, we need to stand with them. ...
"Article 5 is the key, because the refugee crisis, this is nothing. The way you solve this crisis is kill ISIS. I don't understand why people don't understand that. They've blown a Russian plane out of the sky. They've killed people in three, four, five different countries. They're coming. What do we do? We fiddle our thumbs."
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Meanwhile, the Republican presidential front-runners got more, shall we say, creative with their rhetoric in the wake of the Paris attacks. Here's Ben Carson on the SEC Primary circuit in Mobile, Ala., according to Politico:
Continuing his analogy, the Republican presidential candidate said that screening refugees is like questioning how you protect your children, even though you love dogs and will call the Humane Society to take the dog away to reestablish a safe environment.
"By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly," he added. "Who are the people who wanna come in here and hurt us and wanna destroy us? Until we know how to do that, just like it would be foolish to put your child out in the neighborhood knowing that that was going on, it's foolish for us to accept people if we cannot have the appropriate type of screening."
And here's Donald Trump, in an interview with Yahoo News:
Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn't rule it out.
"We're going to have to — we're going to have to look at a lot of things very closely," Trump said when presented with the idea. "We're going to have to look at the mosques. We're going to have to look very, very carefully."
Such talk forces more traditional candidates into a tough spot. Asked by Fox News' Megyn Kelly whether he would shut down mosques like Trump, Marco Rubio tried to sidestep. The Washington Post has the text:
"So whatever facility is being used — it's not just a mosque — any facility that's being used to radicalize and inspire attacks against the United States, should be a place that we look at."
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Smith College might want to add Journalism 101 to the required curriculum. From MassLive.com:
"We are asking that any journalists or press that cover our story participate and articulate their solidarity with black students and students of color," she told MassLive in the Student Center Wednesday. "By taking a neutral stance, journalists and media are being complacent in our fight."
Smith organizers said journalists were welcome to cover the event if they agreed to explicitly state they supported the movement in their articles.
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