Impending Republican Doom, Exhibit XXXVIII

I could easily be reading too much into this, but it seems to be that if an establishment Republican with the backing of the entire state GOP machinery can't win a runoff election with low turnout in a classically red area in the South, it's worth it to ask the question of whether we'll see another landslide next November.

North Georgia voters out-muscled Augustans on Tuesday, propelling Athens physician Paul Broun to an apparent shocking victory over Jim Whitehead of Evans in a congressional runoff widely billed as a geographical rivalry.

Political experts expected Whitehead to finish off his fellow Republican easily. But Whitehead's 3-1 margin in Columbia and Richmond counties wasn't enough to make up for Broun's dominance outside Whitehead's old state Senate district.

Broun won 13 of the district's 21 counties. He received almost 90 percent of the vote in Clarke County - where he worked hard to bring Democrats back to the polls in the absence of a Democrat in the race - and his home county of Oconee. He performed almost as well in other counties east and north of the Augusta area.

Broun pledged to be a bipartisan, reform congressman, in keeping with an unorthodox campaign that put together a coalition of disgruntled Republicans, Democrats and Christian conservatives. He was able to overcome a wide fundraising gap and Whitehead's support from GOP leaders.

This was kind of a funny race, you had two fairly hard-right conservatives involved. But it's clear to me that the race was between an insider and an outsider, and the outsider pulled it off despite being vastly outspent. That says to me that the Republican brand is completely trashed, far more than the experts believe. Yes, Jim Whitehead was an idiot who shot himself in the foot with a number of ill-advised comments. But it's not like most establishment Republicans are much better. And 200-some of them will be on the ballot next November. And the public doesn't seem to have much of a taste for any of them.

Election Day

There's actually an election in northeast Georgia today, a special election for Congress to replace the late Republican Charlie Norwood. Jim Whitehead, a Republican state Senator, is favored in this very red district, but some think it will come down to what is on the forefront of the minds of the voters.

In particular, it will be studied for what it portends about the political impact of the two big "I's": immigration and Iraq.

Former state Sen. Jim Whitehead, widely considered the front-runner, is a conservative in the mold of Norwood, who died in February of lung disease and cancer. He's a staunch opponent of illegal immigration and wants to stay the course in the Iraq war.

He said Monday he was taken out of context when he was quoted as saying early in the campaign that Iraq was "not a big thing" in the district. But he was unwavering in his opinion of what is the hot-button issue is in this race.

"If you talk to a hundred people, somewhere in the mid-90s want to talk about illegal immigration," said Whitehead, who resigned from the Legislature to run for the congressional seat.

But if Whitehead can be forced into a runoff July 17, the war could be the reason. James Marlow, the former Yahoo executive who is the best funded of three Democrats in the race, is banking on it being more on the minds of voters than Whitehead and most of the other Republican candidates think.

"At this point, Iraq is the most expensive issue. We've been fighting a war on a credit card, and the card is owned by the Chinese," said Marlow.

It's in Whitehead's interest to play down Iraq and play up immigrant-hating. But immigration didn't have that much of an impact in 2006. We'll see how it plays today; the smart money is for a runoff between Whitehead and Marlow. Actually, it's likely to come down to turn out, because nobody expects that many people to get to the polls.

UPDATE: Marlow has a blog and has some action items up there in case you know anyone in NE Georgia that you can get to the polls.

What's The Matter With Georgia?

OK, so yesterday I saw this quote from the GOP front-runner for the June special election for US Congress in Georgia's 10th District to replace the late Charlie Norwood, a guy named Jim Whitehead:

"Iraq has not been a big thing in our district."

Wha-wha-what now?

Then today, there's this from Georgia's Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss.

As the Pentagon notified some 35,000 soldiers to prepare for a fall deployment to Iraq, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia said Tuesday he found "truly amazing" progress during a trip to the country this weekend [...]

"Every time I go over there the improvements in the conditions are truly amazing," Chambliss said in a noon conference call with reporters after his fifth visit to the country. "It's very encouraging to me to see the progress."

People on the same trip said the exact opposite.

Chambliss traveled to Iraq with several other members of Congress as part of an Intelligence Committee fact-finding tour. His comments contrasted with those of another Republican in the delegation, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who said in a weekend interview that she found little to be cheerful about.

"The good news is mixed; the bad news is downright troubling," Snowe said.

Have they checked the water in Georgia for melamine?

UPDATE: Here's a good rundown of the possibilities for Democrat Jim Marlow to win the GA-10 seat next month. He's going against three Republicans, so the potential does exist for a split vote.