Everything has to go almost perfectly for Democrat Michelle Nunn if she hopes to be truly competitive in next year’s U.S. Senate race here in Georgia.
So far, things in Washington are going almost perfectly.
Yes, the drama of a government shutdown and the possibility of another, much more serious confrontation over the debt ceiling have excited voters in the Republican base. They are finally getting the battles with President Obama that they have long thought they wanted. However, motivating Georgia’s Republican base was never going to be a problem for the GOP anyway.
Given the partisan split in this state, Nunn’s only hope is to win over independents by presenting herself as a competent, level-headed alternative to a Republican candidate whom she will try to portray as extremist and overly ideological. And for the past several months, the five major candidates for the GOP’s Senate nomination have been auditioning for that role with a rare enthusiasm. It’s as if they’re reading from a script prepared by the Democratic National Committee.
In their competition for Republican primary votes, David Perdue, Karen Handel, Jack Kingston, Phil Gingrey and Paul Broun have all pledged their support to the type of extremism exemplified by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, including backing Cruz’ call to force a government shutdown. Time after time as this process has played out, they have taken positions that are considerably farther to the right than those taken by our two current Republican senators, Johnny Isakson and the retiring Saxby Chambliss.
In fact, Broun and Gingrey even voted against their fellow House Republicans this week on the grounds that they have been too accommodating to President Obama and the Democrats.
Again, given the dynamics of the GOP primary, such behavior is inevitable. Georgia’s Republican base will tolerate nothing but total commitment and all-out warfare against Obamacare, so that’s what the candidates are giving them. The question is what impact that’s going to have on the general-election voter come next fall.
National polling offers an imperfect but still informative answer to that question, and it suggests that independents may be turned off by the strategy. In a national Quinnipiac survey released Tuesday, 69 percent of independents said that the GOP is doing too little to cooperate with Obama, and 74 percent of independents said they opposed shutting down the government as a means of stopping ObamaCare. Only 19 percent of independents said they backed the idea of a shutdown.
Those are promising numbers for a candidate such as Nunn, although I doubt the margins are that high among Georgia independents, who tend to be more conservative.
Nobody has released Georgia-specific polling data on attitudes toward a shutdown, but we do know that Obamacare is unpopular here. In a poll conducted for the AJC last month, just 31 percent of Georgians said they had a favorable impression of the law, while 57 percent had an unfavorable impression. Regardless of who their candidate is, Republicans plan to drape that program and its namesake around Nunn’s neck next fall, and those numbers demonstrate why.
In that same poll, however, just 28 percent of Georgians said they want to repeal Obamacare outright, which is the maximist position taken by Republicans up in Washington as well as by those competing for the GOP Senate nomination. Another 21 percent said they would like to repeal just parts of the law while retaining others. And 44 percent advocate letting the law stand or at least waiting to see how it works out before taking action.
Those numbers put Nunn well in the Georgia mainstream. She has said that while she supports the basic outlines of Obamacare — as a Democrat, she could not do otherwise and still raise money and lure party support — she would like to reform parts of it that deal with small business. If she proves to have the chops as a candidate to communicate that moderate message effectively, she could do well.
Because her would-be opponents are certainly doing their part.
