Word: gop
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hopeful postscript to the GOP's humiliating losses in the Nov. 4 elections, incumbent Saxby Chambliss beat Jim Martin in a runoff vote, dashing the Democrats' hopes for a filibuster-proof Senate. With turnout low despite high-profile stumping by Sarah Palin, John McCain, Bill Clinton and Al Gore--as well as Atlanta rappers Ludacris and T.I.--Chambliss won some 57% of the vote...
...GOP, for its part, has proposed using the $25 billion appropriated earlier this year in the energy bill to modernize the industry, a move opposed by Democrats as forcing Detroit to choose between its present and its future. Giving the automakers a second pass at convincing Congress does nothing to resolve this ideological disagreement. What it does do is give them a chance to repair their beaten-down image. In what became an infamous public-relations disaster, the executives flew in on private jets last month to beg for money. Then, in two hearings before the banking committees, the three...
...other hand, a Martin surprise in this deep-red state would be a crowning embarrassment for the GOP. It would rival Obama's own victory as a repudiation of the Bush agenda of tax cuts for the rich, pork for the well-connected, belt-tightening for the working poor, drill-baby-drill, strict-construction judges and military adventurism - not to mention the political cynicism that made Chambliss notorious after his ads in 2002 comparing his opponent, triple-amputee Max Cleland, to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein...
...Like many Republicans in Washington, Chambliss has trumpeted the idea that the GOP's electoral difficulties are the result of insufficient conservatism and can be reversed only with a stronger defense of traditional values and more consistent opposition to government spending. But it's not as if Republicans in Washington have failed to defend traditional values; they got two conservative Justices on the Supreme Court, passed all kinds of laws restricting abortion and stem-cell research and practically shut down the government to try to save Terri Schiavo. And while it is true that Republicans spent taxpayer dollars like drunken...
...runoff is a big deal. A Chambliss victory would not send much of a message to the nation; it would just confirm the obvious fact that Georgia is more conservative than the nation. But it could reinforce the dangerous message that recent electoral results have been sending to Republicans. GOP moderates like Connecticut Congressman Christopher Shays and GOP pragmatists like North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory keep losing, while most Republican survivors have been conservatives from conservative districts and conservative states. So the party keeps looking more like Chambliss and moving further in his direction - even more white, even more...