Although he ran one of the most despicable campaigns in Senate history against decorated war hero and triple-amputee Max Cleland back in 2002, Saxby Chambliss has not been among the worst Republicans serving in Congress in recent years. While his voting record has earned him miserable ratings from liberal groups and sterling ratings from conservative ones, Chambliss has at least sought to work constructively on some issues and hasn’t been much of a bomb-thrower. In the aftermath of the failure of the Bowles-Simpson commission, for example, Chambliss joined the Gang of Six, a group of senators who sought compromise on deficit reduction and were willing to concede the need for new revenue as part of any deal. More recently, he voted for the New Year’s Eve fiscal cliff agreement, earning the enmity of the Tea Party. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, Chambliss has decided he doesn’t need the headache of taking on the crazies in his own party and has decided not to seek reelection.
In today’s GOP, it is not enough to have an A+ rating from the NRA, a 100% rating from the National Right to Life Committee and Americans for Tax Reform, and a 0% rating from NARAL and the Human Rights Campaign. That is not conservative enough, so Chambliss is calling it quits.
This, of course, creates an open seat in the 2014 election and, sadly, one of the Democrats best pickup opportunities of the cycle. On the Republican side, there will be a crowded field of some of the most unhinged and mentally challenged lunatics in the entire country.
If you are not familiar with the maniacal stylings of the Georgia congressional delegation, you will need to get up to speed quickly. One hardly knows where to begin with these people. Rep. Tom Price, for example, thinks the government is going to take away your Bibles because they’re offensive to gay people. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland joined Michele Bachmann and Louie Gohmert in their deranged attack on State Department employee Huma Abedin, earning a rebuke from Speaker Boehner. Rep. Paul Broun could be the craziest man to ever serve in Congress. Among other things, he thinks the Big Bang Theory was created by Satan. Meanwhile, his colleague Rep. Phil Gingrey, an OB-GYN, thinks that women have difficulty conceiving when they are under stress, so Todd Akin wash’t that far off the mark with the whole rape thing. Rep. Rob Woodall likes to explain to constituents that they don’t need Medicare and they should just take care of themselves. Rep. Tom Graves would rather shut down the government than allow any federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Rep. Austin Scott is a domestic drone conspiracist whose first bill in Congress aimed at destroying the entire Legal Services Corporation in order to protect agricultural interests that discriminate against American citizens in favor of guest workers. And, this, despite running as a big opponent of Latino immigration.
That’s just a primer on the type of people Georgians have chosen to represent them. One of those fools will more likely than not become the next senator from Georgia, but we cannot despair. Of all the states that Obama lost, he only came closer to winning North Carolina than Georgia. It is not as strongly Republican as it seems. We can win this seat if we can find someone reasonable with a little cross-over appeal. Hopefully, that person will not be John Barrow.
