Hollow Rumblings on Georgia’s 2014 US Senate Race

Saxby Cahambliss

Georgia will have a contentious US Senate race in 2014, made more contentious by nonstop blogging.

Two-term incumbent Saxby Chambliss will not seek reelection, perhaps fearing a contentious primary challenge, although he had admitted to the press that the partisan gridlock had worn on him.

Chambliss was an outstanding candidate of sorts. A unprecedented outsider who took down incumbent Democrat (and handicapped veteran) Max Cleland in 2002, Chambliss was also one of few Republican incumbents to survive the 2008 Republican shellacking eight years of compassionate Big Government conservatism under George W. Bush.

Never much of an outstanding legislator during his tenure, followed by infrequent appearances on Monday morning talk shows, Chambliss elicited a Tea Party firestorm when he offered to ease away from his Grover Norquist “No Taxes” pledge following the 2012 election disappointment and the years-end fiscal cliff.

Old-school legislators like Chambliss relied on horse-trading for years, yet the unsustainable debt and unfunded entitlements have pushed a growing coalition of citizens to demand that Washington D.C. stop the spending spree and work toward real solutions which agree on how to cut spending, rather than whether to cut spending or not.

Chambliss has represented a red state going redder for the past decade, and Democratic Congressmen considered likely challengers for the 2014 race have politely declined to run. The last Democratic Senator, Zell Miller, even attended the 2004 Republican National Convention, solidifying his conservative credentials as well as affirming a long-standing trend of Dixiecrats bolting from the Democratic fold once and for all.

The other prior Democratic US Senator, Sam Nunn, withdrew from politics on the Washington DC front, yet his daughter Michelle Nunn has emerged as the Democratic front-runner in the Georgia US Senate race.

 

Michelle Nunn

On the Republican side, a slew of candidates have filed papers to run. Who can blame them? Georgia the reliably conservative and Republican stronghold, one of the first states to project GOP wins for Presidential candidates, should see very little drama.

Yet form the moment that conservative Congressman Paul Broun filed papers, to other conservative candidates who have suggested that low-income students receive paid lunches should sweep their school floors, hollow rumblings in the Peach State and across the country are starting to worry that another Todd-Akin like GOP candidate will sinking an easy win and give the Dems one seat to offset their massive challenges. These concerns are valid. Given that the 2012 US Senate filed should have been a win for the GOP, recurrent trends of poorly-trained candidates not thinking through their message should alarm anyone.

Yes, Congressman Broun once called Evolution a doctrine from the pit of hell, and he believes that the earth is only 6,000 years old. So what? Another potential US Senate candidate had claimed that there was some truth to 2012 Missouri candidate Todd Akin’s assertion that the female body can prevent a pregnancy. He weathered the fallout slightly better, but such loose commentary, now more than ever, cannot go unnoticed in the never-ending media obsession with every poll, every pol, and every pull by voters and pundits to make hourly headlines.

Still, such instantaneous rumblings are hollow at best, at this time, regarding the 2014 US Senate race in Georgia.

From the moment that political pundits on the right as well as the left let fly their shaking in their boots, one has to wonder if the blogosphere is merely obsessed with creating conflict on the right and within GOP primaries just to have something exciting to write about.

Consider one again that Georgia is a reliably conservative state. Consider also that more than ten Republicans have thrown their hats into the political ring to run for the seat. Consider also that two years have passed since the unprecedented setbacks of 2012. Most of all, the US Senate elections of 2014 will be divorced from national concerns about Presidential contenders, whether weak front-runners or wealthy incumbents.



Paul Broun

Last of all, the residents of Georgia will be deciding who will represent them, not the national press, not conservative PACs, and certainly not the blogs and polliwogs on the left or the right who are looking at minute-to-minute microdramas to fill up their reportings on events then and now, and what is to come. The US Senate primary takes place May 20, 2014, with a run-off July 22. Such a mechanism might have come in handy in Missouri, since well-financed as well as articulate candidates will more likely succeed winning two primary elections.

Politics used to be a lot of fun, to the extent that men and women followed the trends and trials of local politicians and policy forays with nuance and discernment. Now it appears that minute-media is taking any slight deviation out of proportion and fomenting doubts about future political bouts. Even Breitbart has jumped into the Georgia-based tempests in a teapot, posting that Republican-connected PACs are donating money to Michelle Nunn. How are these revelations constructive, let alone informative?

The Peach State gets to decide its state of affairs, locally and nationally. All this upsetting, impolitic predictions may cause more upset than the Republican candidates themselves.