Saxby Chambliss Wins

The Democrats can kiss that 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate goodbye.

Tuesday proved to be a good night for Saxby Chambliss and a good night for Republicans.

Chambliss trounced his opponent, Jim Martin.

ATLANTA -- Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss handed the GOP a firewall against Democrats eager to flex their newfound political muscle in Washington, winning a bruising runoff battle Tuesday night that had captured the national limelight.

Chambliss' victory thwarted Democrats' hopes of winning a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. It came after a bitter month long runoff against Democrat Jim Martin that drew political luminaries from both parties to the state and flooded the airwaves with fresh attack ads weeks after campaigns elsewhere had ended.

Minnesota -- where a recount is under way -- now remains the only unresolved Senate contest in the country. But the stakes there are significantly lower now that Georgia has put a 60-seat Democratic supermajority out of reach.

With 70 percent of the precincts reporting, Chambliss captured 60 percent to Martin's 40 percent. Chambliss' win is a rare bright spot for Republicans in a year where they lost the White House as well as seats in the House and the Senate.

"It's been a hard and tough four weeks," Chambliss said at a victory party in Cobb County. "We had a hardcore campaign on both sides and while things look good right now, we're going to continue to follow the returns as they come in."

Chambliss' mantra on the runoff campaign trail was simple: His re-election was critical to prevent Democrats in Washington from having a blank check. Chambliss, 65, had angered some conservatives with his vote for the $700 billion bailout of the financial services industry and his early support in 2007 for the guest worker provision in President Bush's immigration bill. But fearful of unchecked Democratic dominance, some came back into the GOP fold Tuesday.

...Chambliss brought in Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain's vice presidential pick, as his closer. She headlined four rallies for Chambliss across the state Monday that drew thousands of party faithful.

Chambliss' margin of victory was truly impressive.

Voters in Georgia could have brought the Democrats a step closer to that magic number of 60 in the Senate.

Read their lips: No filibuster-proof Senate.

This puts a little bit of a damper on the Barack Obama love fest. Obama should take note that there are Americans not anxious to have the Dems ram his liberal agenda down their throats.

Regarding Sarah Palin supposedly being such a drag on the GOP ticket and blaming her for losing the election for John McCain, that theory should be put to rest.

The day before the election in Georgia, Chambliss chose Sarah Palin to rally the troops for him. She succeeded.

Conservatives do like her. Voters in Georgia clearly don't think she's the twit the lib media and some "conservative" columnists made her out to be.
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The New York Times tries to explain Chambliss' win.

With 96 percent of the state’s precincts reporting in the runoff election, Mr. Chambliss had 57.5 percent of the vote, and his Democratic challenger, Jim Martin, 42.5 percent. The margin was far greater than the three percentage points that separated the two men in the Nov. 4 election, when neither won the required 50 percent. Many of the Democrats who turned out last month in enthusiastic support of Barack Obama apparently did not show up at the polls on Tuesday.

“For a lot of African-American voters, the real election was last month,” said Merle Black, an expert in Southern politics at Emory University. “The importance of electing the first African-American president in history generated enormous enthusiasm. Everything else was anticlimactic.”