Project Logic Ga

(A wise co-worker once said, “Be careful what you say out loud.”)

I almost wrote, “Let’s have a Statewide Blacks for Saxby Victory Party tonight at the Waffle House in Tifton.  Yes, the place has a seating capacity of 30 people but the truckers still need eight chairs.  We could “go green” by carpooling in two Ford Excursions.

A younger, unwise me would have written, “You know those drinking games that are triggered by what you see on T.V.  When I was a congressional staffer during the First Gulf War, gamers would watch CNN to hear “Wolf” as in Blitzer and wolf down a beer as others chanted “wolf, wolf, wolf.”  If you heard,  “Scud” you took a shot…”

Anyway, there should have been a Georgia Senate runoff drinking game called “Hooker in Church/Coattails” that went like this: every time you spot (no pun intended) a Black person at a Saxby Chambliss rally looking as uncomfortable as a Hooker in Church, you pour out a splash for the “dearly departed brother or sista” then drink. 

When Jim Martin mentions “Obama” –the candidate he did not vote for in the primary, choosing to vote for John Edwards, who had left the race by that time, drinkers chant “coattails for cocktails…coattails for cocktails.”

I am pleased I have developed into a cautious person who would never publicly write what I just wrote. 

During the presidential election, we recalled the Tom Bradley Effect.  The concept is that Whites said they would vote for Bradley for Governor of California but once in the polling place switched.  Some experts think that “the Obama Effect” is saying you would not vote for a candidate but actually vote for him or her.

I am coining the new term “the Saxby Effect” where Blacks voted for Saxby out of regional interests but would not come to his rallies because the GOP base makes you feel like “a Hooker in Church.”  (Sidenote: hookers need to be in church and we are hookers at work in some way and on some level…these politicians, hookers.  Congressional and campaign staff, junior hookers.  Wall Street, K Street, Lobbyists, Union Bosses are classic pimps.)    

While most members of the Georgia congressional delegation are good people, the GOP members should be concern about the exclusive, elitist attitude of the GOP base.  I go to everyone’s rallies as a political and policy junkie and GOP folks look at me as if I am a spy for the Dem Team. 

Karen Bogans, absent contributor to this blog, has been a Republican her whole life and her family’s commitment to that party goes back to Reconstruction.  But, it is common for some perky junior league type to test her conservative mettle.  When Karen and I were debating issues weekly in the Rayburn House Office Building Cafeteria, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue was still a moderate Democrat like me.   

Most Americans are eager to have leaders who seek civic debate and discourse rather than those who would divide us for personal and political gain.  Let’s hope that the future of the Georgia GOP centers on Johnny Isakson’s genteel southern approach.  The Waffle House in Tifton won’t hold the “Blacks for Isakson” Victory Party—maybe the Morehouse College gym because they like him there as much as Morehouse alumni Herman Cain. 

Politics and public service are all about connecting with people on a personal level.