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May 25, 2005
Johnny the Mod?
One thing that every Georgian seems to have internalized over the last 12 years is that Johnny Isakson is a moderate. For a long time, being a moderate was the reason he couldn't win statewide office. First, he was unable to inspire Georgia voters against the similarly moderate Zell Miller, and then in 1996 his moderation cost him the Republican nomination for the US Senate to the more conservative Guy Millner. Wannabe Newt Gingrich replacements like Mitchell Kaye warned Isakson to expect a fight if he wanted Newt's old House seat in 1998. Finally, in 2003, Georgia Republicans fretted (and Democrats hoped) that the moderate Isakson (considered a sure thing in a general election) would lose to a conservative challenger in the GOP primary. When it didn't happen, Republicans immediately crowed that because they were the new majority party in Georgia, moderation was no longer a problem (as the moderates no longer voted in Democratic primaries). In actuality, more Georgians voted in the Democratic primary than the Republican one, but that was the story, and the story remained: Johnny Isakson is a moderate.
Well if that is the case, then why wasn't Isakson part of the moderate group of senators from both parties who have forged a compromise on the nuclear option? And why don't we ever hear Johnny's name mentioned alongside that of Lindsay Graham of South Carolina (the Senate's bonafide Southern moderate) or John Warner of Virginia or John McCain or any of the usual Republican moderate compromisers?
Maybe it's because Johnny Isakson is not actually a moderate. I know it's hard for some people on both sides of the aisle to believe, but the media's obsession with defining politicians by the stances they stake out on social issues has so little relevance to how they'll vote on the majority of issues once they are elected.
So Johnny Isakson, who occasionally (but not always) votes against the most extreme anti-choice elements in the Republican party is a "moderate." Meanwhile, Isakson has no problem voting to eliminate the filibuster in order to confirm a judge who has said by taking part in social security and medicare grandparents are cannibalizing their grandchildren. Johnny the moderate -- where have you gone? And did you ever really exist in the first place?
Posted by Chris at May 25, 2005 03:36 PM
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