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The most odious political advertisement of the post-9/11 era was run by Saxby Chambliss against triple-amputee Vietnam veteran incumbent Max Cleland in the 2002 cycle. Almost universally condemned by the polite political class, including now SecDef-designate Chuck Hagel and then-to-be GOP presidential nominee John McCain, the ad morphed Senator Cleland’s face into that of Osama bin Laden, only one year from the attacks on The Homeland.
That a chickenhawk like Chambliss could run an ad like this one offended just about everybody, although it worked: Chambliss won the seat in 2002′s swirling anti-terror fever election, when George Bush put war and “national security” on the midterm ballot.
The “basis” for the ad, if it can be said to have one, was that Senator Cleland was trying to craft employee protections into the emerging Department of Homeland Security, thus (allegedly) holding up the birth of the agency that would protect us from The Tall Man and his planet-wide evil terror operatives.
And now Chambliss has announced, or confided in Georgia’s governor who has announced it for him, that he will retire after two terms in the US Senate. Which is, in itself, reason for celebration, notwithstanding Chambliss’s possible GOP successors:
Two far-right state Republicans have already declared their intention to run for Chambliss’ seat, Roswell’s U.S. Rep. Tom Price (R) and U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Athens), who infamously declared in 2012 that evolution, quantum physics and other established scientific facts are “lies from the pit of Hell.” Broun announced on Tuesday that he was thinking of mounting a primary challenge against Chambliss, who has angered conservatives by participating in the “Gang of Six” effort to broker a budget deal in late 2012.
This is Georgia so the likelihood is that the GOP nominee will be elected Senator. But that was the conventional wisdom in both Missouri and Indiana this past cycle, and we know how those races turned out: with Democrats holding (Missouri/McCaskill) or flipping (Indiana/Donnelly) seats for unlikely Democratic victories. Could that happen in Georgia with a Democratic nominee attractive to the Obama coalition? Last time, Chambliss had to run-off to keep his seat, so it’s not a GOP lock.
Stay tuned.
PS: YouTube commenters note that this ad is not the original version with triple-amputee Cleland’s face morphing into OBL’s; apparently that one’s been pretty well scrubbed. But the point remains the same: it was a dastardly smear that offended Georgians (Zell Miller criticized the ad) and GOPs alike.
36 Comments
Very happy to see him slink away (as if he’ll leave DC; NOT) but the possibility of Senator Paul Broun is quite terrifying. I like seeing that my Athens friends won’t have him as their Congressman anymore, but the prospect of the Democrat not defeating Broun in the Senate race is really scary.
The man makes Louie Gohmert look like he’s Mensa-eligible.
He’s not slinking away. He has been chased away.
The idea of Saxby Chambliss being too much of a lefty tells you everything you need to know about how off-the-deep-end the GOP in Georgia is.
Saxby Chambliss isn’t a disease, he’s a symptom. Come January 2015, he’ll be replaced by an even more virulent strain.
Yeah, that Liberal, Evil Gang of Six that has accomplished exactly — what? — in its conspiracy to impose librul values and take our guns.
Really, how different these folks’ world must be. From mine, certainly, but also from Objective Reality. The Gang of Six is a bunch of center-rightists who’ve got nothing done except to obstruct votes and progress. To think of them as a capitulation, or even compromisers, fundamentally understands both their goals and their actual roles.
Weird, huh?
I posted this yesterday on a similar thread.
Used to be an old time poster here, a Vietnam vet in Georgia, and his favorite modifier for chickenhawk Saxby was “odious.”
Well, that’s certainly where the Smart Conventional Wisdom bettors are. But I wonder if a Julian Bond, or some other national Georgian might give the newbie GOP nominee a scare.
I’m probably dreaming, you are right. The eventual Chambliss replacement will make Ted Cruz look like a lefty.
Jeeze, think what life would have been like if Max Cleland had dispatched Chambliss way back when.
Works for me.
But then what would be the appropriate modifier for the new Senator from Georgia who replaces him?
“Cracker,” which I have every confidence he will be.
Oh, wait…I guess that’s a noun. Sorry. (And apologies to Marion in Savannah who is most definitely not a Cracker.)
Was that Raven?
I wonder if Max Cleland would run?
Sounds like it.
Teddy and Dakine — yep, that was Raven. I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to mention his name. Don’t know why he left us but I always felt a kinship with him. We served at the same time, he in SE Asia dodging bullets from hostiles, me in Northern Virginia, fighting off hostile hangovers.
he sure is that at the least, he’s a STENCH.
I don’t know how he ever faced himself in the mirror again after he sanctioned the Cleland hit.
Oh, how I wish. However, it’s much more likely that the national party will spend zillions to save Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu’s sorry asses and concede Georgia.
Quantum theory comes from the pit of hell? Then classical Newtonian theory must be divine! Man, that is some awesome physics. If this is true, Reps. Price and Broun must certainly be up for a Nobel Prize!!
The Nobel Prize in Magickal Thinking.
Yes, those two. Yecccch.
Broun has resurrected a right-wing argument from the Big Band Era.
In his book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Michael Mann mentioned that in 1948, Representative J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey attacked the distinguished American physicist Edward Condon because he was at the forefront of quantum mechanics. Thomas said that a scientist who stood at the forefront of one revolutionary movement could be at the forefront of another–namely, Communism.
The retirement of Sneering Saxby fills me with joy. There are plenty of people in Congress to despise but there is something about Saxby’s looking down his nose at people that drove me crazy. His replacement may be worse and probably a lot dumber.
Let’s not forget that Saxby was losing by 5 points and Georgia had just installed electronic voting machines updated with a patch called “rob georgia.” That this was one of the first of the “hacked” elections.
http://thedailyjournalist.com/theinvestigative/hacking-the-vote/
A second notable example mentioned in the Hartmann article was the 2002 Georgia Senate race between Republican Saxby Chambliss and decorated Vietnam War veteran, Democrat Max Cleland. In 2002 Georgia was one of the first states to use only electronic voting machines statewide. Diebold Elections Systems provided virtually all of the Georgia voting machines. In the final pre-election poll Cleland led by five points and most observers expected him to win re-election handily.
In 2002 Chris Hood, a consultant for Diebold now known as Elections Solutions was on the ground helping prepare for the election. The votes cast on Diebold machines were stored on unprotected memory cards, which could easily be altered. These memory cards not only carried vote data, but they also carried programs and updates known as patches. As one of his responsibilities, Chris Hood was asked to place a software patch on machines in certain counties before the election. According to Hood, after he and his colleagues arrived at the warehouse, Bob Yerosovitch, the president of Diebold arrived with a stack of memory cards and announced that we needed to patch the machines because the clock wasn’t working properly. He also said that the State wasn’t to know about this.
When the actual votes were counted the Republican candidate, Saxby Chambliss, won by seven percentage points, a 12-point reversal, in a state that for the first time had deployed a 100% Diebold touch screen electronic equipment. [v]
Amazing. Thanks so much for sharing that. Nothing new under the sun, is there?
I had forgotten that.
So many outrages to keep track of! To think he was never actually really elected by Georgia voters legitimately fills me with rage.
Very very good riddance!
Is the “esteemed” Senator’s son Bo interested in political office?
Or is he content with the largess he’s received as his father’s son?
Unfortunately, I don’t think that whatever sacrificial lamb the Democrats put up for the seat has a snowball’s chance in hell. About that I haz a sad.
However, the Teatard steel cage death match to see who gets the nomination ought to be fun to watch.
And as for what I think of Saxby, when I’m being as polite as I possibly can bring myself to be, he’s a lying, cowardly piece of decayed weasel shit that gives pond scum a bad name.
Rule 1 of American politics: when seeking high office, choose the right set of parents.
Rove admired the ad (wiki: Chambliss):
But Chambliss has never had an easy time electorally; it sounds (see above) like he probably stole the seat from Cleland with vote machine fraud, and then he was forced into a runoff in 2008.
So wouldn’t a prominent, well-known (statewide) Dem have a chance, especially against an embarrassingly ignorant wingnut with national profile like Broun? I defer to your judgment as a citizen of the state, but it seems to me there’s an opportunity for a Democrat to make something happen here.
Obama initially claimed Georgia would be a 2008 battleground, but after pulling out he only lost the
state by five points.
Thank you. I cringe every time someone calls Georgia “a Red State,” for which no uncompromised statistical validity exists.
Book Salon up with Michaela Walsh’s Founding a Movement: Women’s World Banking, 1975-1990 hosted by Bethany McLean
No. It doesn’t work that way. Whoever is designated by the MOTU will occupy that Senate seat. Our black box voting doesn’t matter, is irrelevant, is a circle jerk.
What efforts have been brought to bear in Georgia regarding getting rid of those machines?
No argument about Chambliss, but anyone who thinks McCaskill was an improvement probably believes without question that democrats are always good.
We try to bring it up in public whenever we can, but absolutely no progress has been made in changing what are arguably the most fraud prone voting machines in the nation. Connected to that perhaps was Georgia’s recent ranking as the most corrupt state legislature in the nation.
McCaskill is actually showing some spunk this term, and I loved her work on exposing corrupt war profiteers. Sure, she’s a ConservaDem — jeez, it’s Missouri! But I do NOT believe that Todd Akin would have been an improvement, no sir. And those were the choices on offer.
Do I think ConservaDems should be challenged within their party, by electable progressives? Yes, I do. And this site was essentially born of one of the first of those challenges. So I accept no lessons from anyone about the lesser of two evils, the perfect being the enemy of the good, or other such homilies of the middle. FDL helped Connecticut kick Joe Lieberman out of the party and eventually out of the Senate.
I’m proud of that, because Connecticut should have progressive Senators. But Missouri? Probably not. But I’d rather, overall, that Missouri elected Democrats than the GOPs on offer there.
They are nutjobs.
As a Missourian, I concur 100%.
We’ve already got Roy Blunt for our other senator.