Friday, November 23, 2012

This Will Be Fun to Watch

Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss has decided he's seen enough of Grover Norquist:
Sen. Saxby Chambliss took aim at Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist on Wednesday, telling a local television station he’s not worried about a potential primary challenge if he votes to raise taxes.

“I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge,” said Chambliss, who signed Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” when he first ran for Senate. “If we do it his way, then we’ll continue in debt, and I just have a disagreement with him about that.”
So, we have hear a radical right-wing Republican telling the Prelate of No New Taxes to take a long walk on a short pier. For those of you who have been living under a rock, Grover Norquist through his organization, Americans for Tax Reform, has single-handedly done more to bankrupt the United States Treasury than any other human being alive. Norquist is famous for saying "I'm not in favor of abolishing the [U.S.] government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

Seditious statements aside -- and I do consider what Norquist said to be as anti-American and seditious a statement as I have ever read -- Norquist's destructive pledge has made it virtually impossible to govern this country. So, I applaud Senator Chambliss for telling him to get bent. I wish more Republicans would come to their senses and do the same. Then, maybe, we can actually sit down and hash-out reality-based compromises. That's how our government was supposed to work before the anti-tax nihilists grabbed a hold of the GOP's family jewels.

But Chambliss is likely to pay a heavy price for breaking Norquist's anti-tax omerta:
Karen Handel, the former Susan G. Komen for the Cure executive who drove the charity's attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, is considering running for U.S. Senate in Georgia, according to one of her former aides.

“She’s considering it,” Rob Simms, a Republican campaign consultant who worked on Handel’s unsuccessful run for governor in 2010, told the Weekly Standard.

If she ran, she would be going up against Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), whom Roll Call reported may be vulnerable to a primary challenge from the right, given his "willingness to reach across the aisle and his comfort with the idea of compromise."
Handel, if you can believe it, is even more right-wing than Chambliss, an incarnation of the phrase "to the right of Attila the Hun." And woe be to ANY member of the GOP who decides to compromise. This is a war, after all, and Democrats are the enemy. You don't ever compromise with the enemy. You vanquish them.

Well, the Tea Party will only end up vanquishing this seat into Democratic hands. The Tea Party have put up a total of five raving lunatics for U.S. Senate in the last two election cycles, and every one of them lost. They are: Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Todd Akin, and Richard Mourdock. Each ran in a state that was winnable for the GOP, and this year in Indiana caused the GOP to lose Richard Lugar's senate seat, which they had held for decades in that (quite conservative) state.

Indiana is not unlike Georgia, though perhaps a bit more conservative. But there are liberals down there, and a very large African-American community. With wingnut Handel on the ballot, this seat might just be a Democratic pickup in 2016 2014.

So please, Karen, do it for the good of the country. And pass the popcorn.

UPDATE: This is the same Karen Handel who damn near destroyed the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

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