(The following is an imaginary phone conversation between two Georgia Republicans, Brown and Johnson, in November 2014. They’re discussing a gubernatorial election that turned out to be closer than most Republicans expected.)
“Hey there, Johnson. Can you believe those polls in the governor’s race?”
“Hey, Brown. No, I never thought we’d be this close to the election, and talking about the governor’s race being within 3 or 4 points. I mean, we could really lose this thing!”
“Yeah, though we’ll probably end up winning by 6 or 7.”
“You’re probably right.”
“But it did get me thinking: Can you imagine if the other guy wins? Not only what he’ll want to do, but how hard it’ll be to pass our agenda.”
“Actually, I’ve been thinking more about the agenda we already haven’t passed.”
“What do you mean?”
"I was thinking about how Republicans have had the governor's mansion and Senate for 12 years, and the House for the last 10 of those. And how much we haven't done in that time."
“Now hold on, Johnson. I think we’ve done a lot.”
“Do tell.”
“Well, we passed tort reform early on …”
“Much of which got thrown out by the Supreme Court and hasn’t been touched since then.”
“And we created a state charter schools commission — and when the court threw that out, we passed an amendment to set things right.”
“True.”
“We also passed vouchers for special-needs kids …”
“But not for anyone else. The school-choice moves have been pretty limited, Brown.”
"Fine. But surely you think we've moved the ball forward on some things."
“Oh, sure. The criminal justice reforms over the past few years haven’t gotten a ton of play, but they were important. People don’t like the changes to HOPE, but then, most folks don’t realize how bad HOPE’s finances had gotten. And creating the new cities in Fulton and DeKalb is something the Democrats probably never would have done, and they’ve helped bring government closer to the people and introduced some privatization of public services — something, by the way, the state hasn’t done much of, especially when it comes to transportation.”
“Yeah, I read something about a year ago saying there’s about $200 billion in private money available for infrastructure projects world-wide, and it looks like we won’t get much of it at all.”
“Bingo, Brown. But, hey: We did get a T-SPLOST! Even if it didn’t even pass in the region it was designed for.”
“A tax increase! Along with the hospital bed tax, and a bunch of taxes we’ve raised and called ‘fees.’ “
“Yep. There’s been some other good stuff, too. We let spending rise early on, but lately we’ve balanced the budget by cutting spending. Then again, pretty much every agency, department, board and commission we inherited 12 years ago still exists. And worst of all, we have yet to have any kind of broad-based tax reform.”
“Yeah, how many sessions have gone by since that tax reform council presented its findings?”
"Four. In the past two, Republicans had a super-majority in each chamber. And still, nothing. Not to mention they could've done something to flatten and lower taxes before the recession. You wonder, what are our guys waiting for?"
“They didn’t wait for much of anything this past session. Wanted to pass the budget and get out of town as soon as they could so they could get back to campaigning.”
“Makes you wonder why we try to win all these elections. Maybe that’s one reason this year’s looking closer than it should be.”
“Yep. Even if we pull this one out, it’ll be tough four years from now if we don’t start getting more done.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe we can keep getting away with it.”
