Hmm… my politics category is drowning out the others. Oh well.
Good article by John Nichols talking about a political race that on the surface didn’t look too important in the big scheme of things, but, as the author points out, could be a microcosm for the large distaste that the conservative Republicans are showing for the GOP. His article, Slapping Down the “GOP Establishment”, describes a race between Jim Whitehead and Paul Broun for the 10th Congressional Seat in Georgia. Georgia has a runoff system, where the two people receiving the highest number of votes go into a runoff. Whitehead is described as a “rubberstamp for the Bush White House and Republican leaders in Congress”, while Broun was running as simply “fighting the entire GOP establishment.”
Whitehead was a shoe-in for the election.
Well, Broun has won Tuesday’s election by less than four hundred votes.
Broun’s message sounds suspiciously like Ron Paul’s message during his Presidential run (and Paul’s message during his entire political career). Nichols describes this in the meat of the article towards the end:
As evidence of his independence, Broun emphasized a Ron Paul-like committed to “work to restore government according to the Constitution as our Founders intended.” While the Georgia appears to be a more cautious constitutionalist than the maverick Texas congressman who is making a longshot bid for the party’s presidential nomination in 2008, Broun borrowed one of the most popular of Paul’s principles, promising that if elected he would assess any new legislation by first asking: “Is it constitutional and a proper function of government?”
No one was going to confuse Broun with a liberal, but he did display a Paul-like libertarian streak, suggesting that the federal government ought to stay away away from issues gay marriage and legalizing marijuana — matters that the candidate suggested are best handled at the state level.
“I believe in the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which clearly says that all powers not specifically given to the federal government, or prohibited by the Constitution to the states, are reserved to the states and the people,” Broun said. “I am not a person who believes that our lives should be controlled by politicians in Washington. I do not believe that the states are merely administrative units of the federal government, to do its bidding.”
I’m hoping that this message is going to resonate outside of George, to the rest of the country. I know there are many Democrats who are switching their party affiliation in order to vote for Paul.