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ForsythOpinion
Races closer
than thought
If you had told me a year
ago that Gov. Nathan Deal
would essentially be tied at
this point in his re-election
campaign with an inexperi
enced Democratic legislator,
1 would have asked if you
were smoking some of that
stuff that is legally on sale in
Colorado.
If you had said a year ago
that a Democrat who'd never
been a candidate for office
before would be running
competitively for the Senate
seat vacated by Saxby
Chambliss, 1 would have
given you the same skeptical
response.
Anyone familiar with
Georgia's elections in 2010
and 2012 would have reached
a similar conclusion. In those
two cycles. Republicans
swept every statewide office
by comfortable margins, easi
ly retained a U.S. Senate seat,
and won roughly two-thirds
control of both legislative
chambers.
That's about as thorough a
political whipping as you'll
ever see. One of my journal
istic associates described the
carnage in these words: “I
think this is the official end of
the Democratic Party in
w’!
As 2014 approached, it
was a foregone conclusion
among the experts that Deal
would cruise to a second
term. Atlanta Mayor Kasim
Reed hinted at one point that
Democrats shouldn’t bother
to field a candidate against
his good friend the gover
nor.
That same logic applied to
the Senate race, where it was
assumed that whoever the
Republicans nominated
would easily dispatch the sac
rificial lamb that came ot of
the Democratic primary.
But here we are, a little more
than a month away from the
general election, and both races
have tumed out to be much
tighter than predicted.
When independent polls first
started showing that a close
race was developing between
Deal and state Sen. Jason
Carter, some Republicans
scoffed that such a thing simply
could not be possible. Mike
Hassinger, for example, wrote
on a GOP website: “Carter tied
with Deal? Maybe in
If you look at the poll
numbers for the past few
weeks, however, you may
have to conclude that uni
corns are real.
In two recent independent
polls of the governor’s race,
Deal was ahead of Carter by
45-44 percent in one survey,
while Carter had a 46-45
percent edge over Deal in the
other one. If you aggregate
the polling data for the past
month, Deal’s average lead
over Carter is about one-half
of 1 percent.
Republican David Perdue
has put a little more daylight
between himself and
[E
TOM CRAWFORD
Columnist
Democratic opponent
Michelle Nunn in the Senate
race. Over the past month,
his average polling lead over
Nunn has been somewhere
between 3 and 4 percentage
points. :
None of the candidates in
either race. at this point, has
the 50 percent support they
would need to avoid a runoff
after the general election.
thanks to the presence of
Libertarian candidates on the
ballot. :
This surprising perfor
mance by Democrats in the
two biggest races does not
mean that Georgia has sud
denly become a two-party
state, When the ballots are
tallied in November,
Republicans will still have an
iron grip over the General
Assembly and will hold either
nine or 10 of the state’s 14
seats in the U.S. House of
Representatives.
Given that partisan leaning,
it’s entirely possible that as
election day gets closer, con
servative voters who have
been disenchanted with Deal
or Perdue may decide they’re
going to vote for the
Republicans after all and
“come home” to them.
On the other hand, the
efforts by Secretary of State
Brian Kemp to shut down
minority voter registration
drives could motivate African
Americans to turn out in larg
er numbers than usual, which
would work against the
Republican candidates.
If Deal and Perdue fall
short of getting 50 percent of
the vote and are pushed into
runoff elections, the advan
tage lies with the
Republicans.
There have been at least
five statewide general election
runoffs since 1992, and in
each of them the Republican
candidate won because GOP
voter turnout was stronger
than Democratic turnout.
The recent history of
Georgia politics and the
state’s conservative inclina
tions suggest that Deal and
Perdue, even as close as their
races are, could still wind up
as the winners,
No matter what, it has been
a much more inieresting elec
tion year than most people
thought possible a year ago.
Who knows how it will end?
Tom Crawford is editor of The
Georgia Report, an Internet
news service at gareport.com
that reports on state government
and politics. He can be reached
attcrawford@gareport.com.
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“T don't know why, but Dad seems to think it's scary.”
Jim Powell for the Forsyth County News
Obama stands aloof from
four foreign policy traditions
President Obama’s speech at the
United Nations last week was “an
important turning point in
American foreign policy ~— and in
his presidency.” That’s the verdict
of Brookings Institution scholar
and former Clinton White House
aide William Galston, a Democrat
who has not been an unqualified
admirer of this Democratic presi
dent’s foreign policy.
Whether Obama’s decision to
launch air strikes against the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and
Khorasan terrorists is a turning
point, it was at least a move in the
direction of a tradition in
American foreign policy that has
been conspicuously lacking in his
administration.
That tradition was christened by
Walter Russell Mead in his 2001
book, “Special Providence,” as the
Jacksonian Impulse, one of four
that have together shaped
American foreign policy since the
founding of the republic. The oth
ers, named after American leaders,
are the Hamiltonian, Wilsonian
and Jeffersonian traditions.
Jacksonians, like their name
sake, Andrew Jackson, are gener
ally not much interested in foreign
policy. But when Americans are
attacked, they respond with righ
teous fury and a determination to
utterly destroy the enemy.
Franklin Roosevelt invoked that
tradition when in his Pearl Harbor
speech he said, in a line that drew
not just applause but whoops and
hollers, “The American people, in
their righteous might, will win
through to absolute victory.”
That’s not Obama’s style. He
came to office pledged to make
nice with hostile Iran and
unfriendly Russia. Even while
announcing air strikes in Iraq and
Syria, he made sure to say
America needs allies and will not
put boots on the ground.
Obama’s reluctance to take a
Jacksonian stand is obvious, but
ISIS’s beheadings of Americans
were something he could not let
pass unrebuked. Mead's analysis
L
ashks how [
Y~ &,
ey
Jimmy Margulies The (New Jersey) Record
This is a page of opinion — ours, yours and
others. Signed columns and cartoons are the
opinions of the writers and artists, and they
may not reflect our views.
MICHAEL BARONE
Columnist
in his American Interest blog was
headlined, “A President
Surrenders.”
Which of Mead’s other three
traditions has Obama followed?
Certainly not the Hamiltonian
tradition, named for Alexander
Hamilton, which seeks to make
the world safe for American com
merce, accepts amoral concepts
like national interest and balance
of power and is willing to use
force in morally ambiguous situa
tions.
Obama has been willing to let
Pacific and Atlantic trade negotia
tions languish in order to placate
labor unions nostalgic for long
gone steel and automotive jobs, He
W “realism” of George H. -
Bush, He has allowed the bud
get sequester-to hollow out
American military forces.
*One might expect Obama to
embrace a Wilsonian affection for
international institutions and
respect for international law. Many
Democrats criticized George W.
Bush for ignoring them. As a pres
idential candidate, Secretary of
State John Kerry disparaged the
“trumped up, so-called coalition of
the bribed, the coerced, the bought
and the extorted.”
But Bush's coalition that went
into Iraq included more than 30
nations, most of them democra
cies, Kerry's and Obama’s coali
tion against the Islamic State
includes maybe eight, mostly
autocracies. On Iraq, unlike both
Bushes, Obama has not sought
authorization from Congress or the
United Nations.
He was happy to pocket the
Nobel Peace Prize. But unlike
Woodrow Wilson, who sought to
subordinate the United States to
the League of Nations, Obama
seeks only applause, not approval,
from international organizations.
The one of Mead’s four tradi
tions that Obama comes closest to
embracing is the Jeffersonian,
Thomas Jefferson wanted to keep
a pristine agricultural America
apart from the evil European
empires. Obama talks repeatedly
about “nation building at home,”
which appears to mean maintain
ing and expanding a tottering enti
tlement system and welfare state.
Jefferson did make accommoda
tions to reality. He swallowed con
stitutional qualms and purchased
Louisiana, He sent the Navy and
- Marines to quell the Barbary
pirates, His successor, James
Madison, accepted a Hamiltonian
Bank of the United States.
Obama’s actions against the
Islamic State, however limited,
and his support for the Dodd-
Frank Act, which props up the big
banks, are in mmm
- t.
eet oot i
tuous America from a vicious
world. Obama has generally
sought to keep a too-often vicious
America from sullying a suppos
edly virtuous world, Obama's for
eign policy initiatives — negotia
tions with Iran, the reset with
Russia, mollifying rhetoric for
Muslims — that his own election
would make the rest of the world
take a benign view of America.
That assumption seems to be in
tatters,
Mead’s argument is that
American foreign policy has been
successful because American lead
ers have, in varying proportions,
blended its four traditions together.
Obama seems to be aloof, to vary
ing degrees, from all of them.
Michael Barone, sénior political
analyst atthe Washington Examiner,
is a resident fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute, a Fox News
Channel contributor and a co
author of “The Aimanac of
American Politics.”