About Georgia: Told Ya So!

I cannot resist commenting on the 2014 Georgia US Senate race.

Saxby Chambliss

From the day that Republican Saxby Chambliss announced his retirement, conservatives fretted that the Peach State would be the peachy chance for a Democratic pick-up in 2014.

I was not sure about that. Still, Georgia conservatives like Jackie Gingrich Cushman argued that the Southern state, with a strong urban culture, a thriving media center, and growing minority population, might turn the state purple, then blue.




David Perdue

Progressive Democrats plotted the same line of doomsday thinking.

Sixteen Republicans running for the seat complicated matters, especially when the Democrats united behind former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn's daughter Michelle Nunn.

Her claim to fame? Working with Republican President George Herbert Walker Bush's "Thousand Points of Light" charity. In fact, the Georgia Democrat spent more time allying herself with the one-term Republican President than the two-term Presidential incumbent.

Still, the GOP infighting for the seat worried conservatives. Congressman Paul Broun repudiated evolution, supported Second Amendment rights without restrictions.

The run-off was a tight battle between Jack Kingston and David Perdue, and the two candidates tried to pain the other as not right-wing enough, or too soft on conservative issues.

Would their brazen, barn-storming conservatism turn off otherwise amiable Georgians?

There is nothing that a Democrat in a red state likes more than two conservatives pulling each other so far to the right, that the left-leaning candidate can play centrist and win.

Perdue and Kingston had their share of controversial remarks, too, but unlike 2012 and the "legitimate rape" nonsense which followed, the Democrats were playing defense across many seats, and President Obama was swamped with scandals, incompetence, and dysfunction.

The race showed a tight contest between Nunn and Perdue, including one poll which placed them one point apart. Playing the conservative cynic worried about the demise of the GOP, Pat Buchanan predicted a Nunn victory in Georgia.

He was wrong, and I knew it all along. Townhall.com contributors wrote some hype about this race, but the end was a conservative affirmation.

The election night results gave Perdue a ten point lead, and put aside the need for a run-off. Nunn fell apart fast in this race. Georgia is not going purple by any means. Governor Nathan Deal even trounced another well-known Georgia name, Carter. Ideology and values trumps name ID, and the country is better for it. Democrat John Barrow lost his House seat, too, after surviving the Republican waves cycle after cycle.

As I had predicted, Georgia stayed reliably red, conservative, freedom-loving and freedom-fighting.

In three words: Told Ya So!

What else can we draw from this damning failure of the Southern Democratic strategy?

Minority voters are very much up for grabs, and in the South, they are trending Republican, not Democrat. Contrary to the argument that non-white voters are genetically Democratic, culture (not color) are the determining factors for political voter demographics. Georgia is not going purple, no more than Texas, where Hispanic voters are now going Republican, along with the rest of the state. Tea Party affiliates are gaining ground in the Sun Belt, too.