Posted on 11/28/2012 8:53:45 AM PST by IbJensen
Saxby Chambliss is waffling around like a dog off its leash for the first time.
He says he does not care about a “twenty year old pledge” he signed. He’s talking about the Americans for Tax Reform pledge that says he pledges not to raise taxes. He has clarified his remarks to mean he wants tax reform that increases revenue through job growth.
Everyone knows that Saxby meant he was happy to raise taxes. Now, under pressure back home, he is waffling. He covets his seat in Washington and is fearful of being primaries. Georgia has primary run-offs, whichs means he can be taken out. He cannot bring himself to say he wants to raise revenue through changing in the tax code that will cause taxes to go up, so he dances around. Behind the scenes, we all know he will work to structure a proposal that increases taxes on Americans, but he’ll cleverly make sure there are enough votes so he can vote against it. He is active and has been actively complicit with Mark Warner (D, VA) and others on raising taxes.
I started working on Saxby Chambliss’s campaign in 1994, the year he beat Craig Mathis. Mathis, who still has a bumper sticker stuck to a light pole next to Vineville Baptist Church in Macon, Georgia, ran as a typical Southern Democrat. Saxby campaigned that Mathis would join Bill Clinton in raising taxes on the American people. A symbol of his commitment to not raise taxes was the Americans for Tax Reform pledge. Saxby won in the 1994 Republican wave with a brilliant campaign manager named Rob Leeburn, who went on to be his Chief of Staff for a number of years.
In the campaigns of 1994, 1996, 1998, and 2000 — all of which I actively volunteered on his campaign so much so that I had a key to the office and occasionally slept on the nasty, but incredibly comfortable couch in the back office — Chambliss kept an oversized copy of his ATR pledge at the front door of his campaign office. When his signature would begin to fade, he’d re-sign the pledge on top of his old signature.
In the seventeen years Saxby Chambliss has been in Congress, expenditures have outpaced revenue in all but four of those years. Those years happened to be during the Clinton years during the height of the dot-com bubble people forget when talking about Clinton tax rates. Since that time, and for the entirety of the time the Republicans controlled Congress, outlays have exceeded receipts. But Saxby and the GOP stuck to their no new tax pledge.
Saxby Chambliss has been one of the culprits in Washington’s spending addition. Forget the War on Terror, etc. While national security matters explain a good bit of the deficits, they do not explain all of them. For example, Saxby Chambliss was a major proponent of agricultural largess. After the Democrats took back Congress in 2006, Saxby Chambliss personally lobbied the entire Georgia delegation to support the Ag bill he favored. All the House Republicans from Georgia, except Phil Gingrey, broke with Chambliss on that.
Chambliss has been a huge spender for agriculture and defense, two key constituencies he has always had. He has, in short, spoken like a champion of limited government, but voted like a free spending liberal for his own constituencies. Now, in the ultimate sign that Chambliss is ready to throw in the towel on any pretense, he signals he wants to raise taxes . . . . errrr . . . . “revenue.”
Revenue has gone up significantly since Saxby Chambliss first got to Washington. While it dipped between 2007 and 2009, even the drop into 2009 yielded higher revenue than existed in 2004 during George Bush’s re-election. Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem, but Saxby Chambliss, being part of that problem, cannot see it. Instead, he sees a growing gap between spending and revenue and thinks it must be closed by increasing revenue.
Saxby Chambliss has been part of the problem and remains part of the problem.
A couple of years ago a mutual friend from Macon went up to see Saxby. There was a tea party rally going on. As our mutual friend sat in the office waiting for Saxby, his staff stood around ridiculing the tea party activists going by as simpletons, uneducated, hicks, and nuts. Chambliss himself has been overheard talking disparagingly of tea party activists in the Capitol Hill Club and elsewhere.
He has become entrenched in Washington, DC and thinks that we here in Georgia are the problem, not him. In 2005, he was convinced that we here in Georgia were the problem on immigration. Since then he’s been convinced that we here in Georgia are the problem by not sending enough money to Washington, D.C.
In fact, we here in Georgia should convince Saxby that we are a problem — his problem in his path to re-election. We can and should make him fight for it and, the Good Lord willing, drive him from office in 2014. Georgia requires that a candidate in a primary secure 50% of the vote to get to the general election. A couple of well funded challengers could pull Saxby below 50% thereby forcing a runoff fight between Saxby and a conservative challenger. Saxby, being from South Georgia, has a weakness in the metro-Atlanta area. That weakness, combined with a libertarian four years ago, forced Saxby into a runoff election.
A conservative from metro-Atlanta could put Saxby Chambliss in peril and we should work to make that happen.
Poster boy for term limits. 8 years max as a congressman and 2 terms max as a Senator. 20 years total in Washington is more than enough for any politician. Chambliss is in the final 2 years of his second Senate term, which will give him a total of 20 years on Capitol Hill. He’s starting to turn mushy like the rest of them.
“He covets his seat in Washington and is fearful of being primaries. Georgia has primary run-offs, whichs means he can be taken out.”
Careful what you wish for. Too many times, a viable, winnable conservative Senator or Senate candidate has been beaten in the primaries by someone believed to be “pure” by tea-party primary voters, only to have his or her arse handed to them in the general election (e.g. Indiana, Delaware). As for pledges, the only pledges that matter are ones regarding upholding the Constitution, and taking care of his constituents, not some ill-thought “pledge” made to some moose-limb rabble rouser.
Chambliss is a backsliding RINO DC Poweratti content to be in power, even if in second place. He never saw an appeasement he wouldn’t try to foist off on his constituents either for amnesty for illegals, or in this latest case tax their ass to death for the “sake of the ‘country’ he loves so much”. BullSHIT!
The country he loves is that damned country-club Senate! I wrote him one last time to tell him I don’t give a damn about ‘his’ country - this country, ours, can’t tax its working taxpaying citizens to death to pay for no-good leeches, and that he was dead to me as far as his next campaign for the Senate and that I would give as much as financially possible to anyone that runs against him in the primary. At this point, I’d even consider a Zell Miller-like Democrat. I am so pissed at him and Isakson I can’t see straight hardly.
Screw him and his DC power base, screw him and his good ole boy Georgia RINOs that put him up for office and keep him there. I’ll do everything I can to get rid of this RINO appeaser.
I hope he doesn’t think his wedding vows have expired.
This born and bred Georgian is going to do anything needed to primary him, regardless. He needs to be made an example.
I’m not a fan of Grover Norquist. He’s a covert agent for Islam. And he’s not conservative across the board. I wish someone else was in charge of the “no new taxes” pledge.
But I must say, he played it pretty perfectly with Chambliss. Instead of saying that you are breaking your pledge with me, he said he’s breaking his pledge to his constituents.
And so he did. So now he’s backing up, like the corrupt politician that he is.
I do wish we could find somebody more soundly conservative to take Norquist’s place, however.
Dear Saxby,
You and your useless coward party can go **** yourselves.
It isn’t just this “one” thing....it is a plethora of backsliding. He needs to go, go down hard.
Everytime I hear Saxby’s name I think of that photo of him standing behind a laughing Ted Kennedy.
Dear Sen. Chambliss,
Perhaps you need to be reminded WHY we have the pledge to begin with. Please recall the Reagan-Bush era. During this period both Presidents Reagan and Bush, in good faith negotiations in an effort to reduce the deficit, agreed to minor tax increases in exchange for budget cuts as part of an overall compromise package with the Democrats.
Funny, though, how it all worked out: The tax increases ALWAYS took effect and remained in place. But spending was NEVER cut. NOT A PENNY!!!!! NEVER!!!! There were a number of these deals during this period. The Dems always promised some spending cuts in exchange for a few tax increases. THIS NEVER HAPPENED AND NEVER WILL!!!! Please wise up Sen. Chambliss.
The GOP eventually wised up. After they figured out that the Dems acting like Lucy they were Charlie Brown naively trusting that she would act in good faith.
If the GOP cannot defend the interests of the taxpayers in this nation, it really cannot be considered a credible alternative to the Democrat Party. The tax pledge, sir, with all due respect, is there for a reason. We have a SPENDING problem in DC, not a revenue problem. And moreover, the Dems cannot and will NEVER reduce domestic spending in any meaningful way. They will only consider cutting spending on things we really need, like the Defense Department, and the Border Patrol.
Sincerely,
TBEL
PS:
Grover Norquist for President!
Eric Erickson is sucking around for support to run against Saxby. He seemed tickled on his radio show when it was brought up. I want Saxby out but we must make sure the replacement is not a plant or has a checkered past.
Georgia is not as red as it used to be. We could lose if the R is weak or gets caught in a scandal.
My gut agrees with you about old Saxby, but how close is Georgia to flipping to purple or blue like North Carolina. For an incumbent, re-election is job one, the constituents be damned. Does Chambliss see the demographic shift hand writing on the wall coming to the Peach State?
The only thing that saved that card carrying RINO moron last time was Sarah Palin running in at the last minute and doing a rally for him in the Gwinnett County Civic Center.
We and all of our friends voted for the Libertarian in the primary but then they scared us into voting for Saxby in the runoff saying if he didn’t win the Dems would have a super majority.
Never again Saxby. Your vote for that Food Safety Act was the last straw buddy. You are going back to Macon in 2014.
Georgia is solid, I think...most Georgians have just been hoaxed by Saxby and Isakson with tough (no-action) talk.
They both try to slip appeasing stuff in any chance they get and have to be bitch-slapped back to sense. They change their tunes but not their hearts....screw both of them....I’d rather have an honest man like Zell Miller.
I miss Congressman Larry McDonald D-GA, the last really decent Democrat I ever respected.
Miller was perhaps the last elected Democrat with integrity, common sense, and love for his country.
Me too, he was my Congressman once.
I’m done being oogy-boogied with the taunts of “be careful what you wish for, we might lose the Senate, House - whatever” We LOST the SENATE! We LOST the WH, we only just maintained in the HOUSE.
It is time to stop cowering and stop thinking about what effect this or that has on national politics. DO NOT ELECT RINOs - that will solve a hell of a lot of things in my book.
Chambliss and Isakson need to go. PERIOD!
He personally signed his book for me.
I want him and Isackson gone. They usually take turns on which one will pretend to be conservative based on who is closest to election.
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