Before dropping out, Chambliss had mixed feelings about running again
The first serious indication I got from Sen. Saxby Chambliss that he wasn’t planning to run for re-election next year came two weeks ago, during an interview at his local office in Cobb County. I put some of it in my write-up of the meeting, and I could have written a whole column about his mixed feelings about running for a third term in the Senate. But I had to balance space considerations (that piece was for the print edition of the AJC) and interest in what the “Gang of Six” member had to say about the fiscal cliff, debt ceiling, etc., so I kept the re-election talk in my column limited and placed at the end. Plus, he gave me no reason to believe he’d announce his intentions for 2014 so soon.
Looking back, and in light of his statement today that he’s leaving due in largest part to “frustration, both at a lack of leadership from the White House and at the dearth of meaningful action from Congress,” I thought I’d publish his entire remarks about whether he’d run and how he’d arrive at the decision:
ON WHETHER HE’S GOING TO RUN FOR RE-ELECTION:
What I’m doing right now, what I do at the end or beginning of every election cycle, we’re evaluating where we are and what our goals are. And the difference … this is an eight-year decision for me. It’s two years plus six years. That’s a lot different form a two-year decision. And if I thought the next eight years were going to be filled with contentious debates and the wrong way to govern that we have just gone through in the last two months, it would have a significant impact on my decision. But yeah, right now my plans are to run.
We’re in good shape financially from a campaign standpoint. Got a lot more money to raise, but we’ll do that. …
First of all, I’ve never backed off from a fight. And I’ve never backed off from my principles of trying to solve problems. Anytime you do that, then you’re going to create controversy. You can’t govern in the way you have to govern under our Constitution without antagonizing or making folks unhappy with you. I don’t worry about that. Obviously I’d love to have everybody happy with me, but I could go up and vote no on everything and you wouldn’t see the opposition activity that is stirring around out there now. But I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do what I think’s right for the country. When I voted for TARP in ‘08, it was the right thing to do. And people are still upset about that. But what they fail to realize is what both Johnny [Isakson] and I said when we voted for it: In the long run, this will not only settle down the financial community, but we’ll [the government] make money. And we’ve made money on TARP. It was kind of a no-brainer back then. And as things have gone forward from that on the other issues that folks have gotten upset about, it was the right thing to do.
So I don’t worry about that — well, I say I don’t worry about that: Obviously you always worry about your political future. But the thing that’s really been encouraging to me, with all the activity stirring around, I have people now instead of stopping me in the grocery store and saying, ‘Let me tell you about my problem,’ they stop me wherever I am and say, ‘Look, we’re reading all this stuff, just know we’ve got your back — those of us who are by far the majority are behind you and appreciate what you’re doing, we just don’t talk to the press or pick up the phone and call you.’
And on the fiscal cliff issue, it’s pretty easy to tell when somebody calls your office whether it’s been generated by an email or something because they’ll reading a script. And by far, the negative comments we got, folks were reading a script.
So, when you take it all into account — I mean, I’m flying back to D.C., I [went] back last week, I had six people stop me in the airport who just, I didn’t know any one of ‘em. But they just came over and said, ‘Look, we just want you to know we appreciate your vote the other day, we appreciate what you’re doing.’ You know, that just doesn’t happen regularly. [Earlier that week] at Lillian Lewis’s funeral, I had five or six people come up and say the same thing. And I’ve had offers of fund raisers from around the country, as well as around the state, from folks, some of whom had never supported me before, because they appreciate doing the right thing. So at the end of the day, we’ll be fine. But we’re going to think things through like we always do, but I think I know what the answer is.
ON WHETHER GRIDLOCK IN WASHINGTON WOULD BE ENOUGH TO MAKE HIM LEAVE:
This’ll be, what, I just concluded 18 years. And when I first got elected to Congress, we were in that wave of Republicans that took over the House, took over the Senate, those were fun times. [Newt] Gingrich was our leader, he had good ideas, we really passed good positive legislation. Sometimes it got done, sometimes it didn’t, although out of the Contract with America, I think we got seven out of the 10 provisions passed. Those were fun times. The time we went through at the end of the year, and really leading up to that — I’ve been working on this fiscal crisis now for two and a half years. And the bumps in the road we’ve run into … in the past couple of months wasn’t as much fun as what it was in ‘95, ‘96 and going forward.
You want to look forward to getting up and going to work in the morning. I really looked forward, in those early years, to getting up and going to work. Sometimes now I think, gosh, we got to get up, we got to face this fiscal battle again tomorrow.
– By Kyle Wingfield
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
358 comments Add your comment
Hillbilly D
January 26th, 2013
6:08 pm
Rafe
They’ve got a ton of work to do over there on the sports side.
td
January 26th, 2013
6:26 pm
Aesop’s Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
January 26th, 2013
3:47 pm
D – I just hit the refresh button and then go do something else for a while. Like mow the lawn or wash the car. I guess the techies at the urinal forgot to reboot their dial up connection.
Nah, they are using the power of the server to make millions of calculations to try to find a way that the Dems can be successful in 2014 in the Georgia Senate race. I think the server is about read to blow a circuit.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
January 26th, 2013
6:42 pm
BEIRUT (AP) — Issuing Tehran’s strongest warning to date, a top Iranian official said Saturday that any attack on Syria would be deemed an attack on Iran, a sign that it will do all it can to protect embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Too bad there ain’t a Repug in the white house, this would be like twofer.
And if Iran wants a nuklar bomb so bad, why don’t we just drop one on them?
Rafe Hollister preparing for an Obamanist America
January 26th, 2013
6:50 pm
Aesop
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why we care about that conflict in Syria, they have no oil, and as long as our enemies are killing themselves, have at it. Wasn’t it the Arabs who came up with the old, enemy of my enemy is my friend. I would rewrite that to, the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy, and let me not do anything to hinder them killing each other.
td
January 26th, 2013
6:52 pm
Rafe Hollister preparing for an Obamanist America
January 26th, 2013
6:50 pm
Agreed. As long as they are not effecting the free flow of oil in the region or attacking our friends then who cares if they are killing each other.
JamVet
January 26th, 2013
7:02 pm
As long as they are not effecting the free flow of oil in the region or attacking our friends then who cares if they are killing each other.
Me three!!
Here’s to hoping untold numbers of innocent men, women and children are slaughtered just to assuage my gutless bloodlust from afar!!
And I’m not even a Republican Christian!
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
January 26th, 2013
7:04 pm
Rafe – It’s not so much Syria that concerns me, in fact, you are correct in saying that our enemies, al qaeda and assad are locked in a death struggle, which is good. It’s too bad both of them can’t lose. The only reason we are even considering an invasion is obozo wants to make sure al qaeda wins, like he did in Libya and Egypt. If it were me, I’d figure out which one was the strongest and give the other one some better weapons.
The real problem is Iran. If the lunatics running that country were gone from this world, the whole region would be for the better, including Israel’s security. The libs like to say Bush attacked the wrong country but I think we didn’t attack enough countries. We were in the neighborhood and should have wiped this abomination off the map.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
January 26th, 2013
7:08 pm
And just like that, here’s neville chamberlin offering his opinion.
GiveItASportingTry
January 26th, 2013
7:10 pm
Kyle says “But I had to balance space considerations (that piece was for the print edition of the AJC). What a crock. What space are you talking about? In the “paper” paper? They don’t use much paper these days. What’s the deal here?
JamVet
January 26th, 2013
7:14 pm
Andy, like td everything you represent is depraved and filthy. Your religion, your political party and your sociopathic and bitter little soul.
But you do two serve a damn role as to what decent people never want to be like.
Kudos, even Jesus loves you.
Sailfish
January 26th, 2013
7:23 pm
hillbilly d
Yes, I’ve been using google chrome a lot lately, firefox has just gone whacko, what are you going to do?
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
January 26th, 2013
7:29 pm
Give war a chance.
td
January 26th, 2013
7:31 pm
JamVet
January 26th, 2013
7:14 pm
And this coming from someone that is so far to the left that he pulled the lever for Nader at one time.
We know it is you that hates this country. You hate the military, you hate religion and religious people, you hate free enterprise, worth ethic, personal responsibility and think it is unconscionable to hold a person accountable of their own actions.
We really do not have time for people like you in this country but we have to put up with your kind.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
January 26th, 2013
7:32 pm
AmVet thinking he knows what “decent” people want to be like is simply laughable.
Considering his tenuous hold on reality.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
January 26th, 2013
7:59 pm
I wonder how many other years besides 2010 AmVet has a blackout on?
Hillbilly D
January 26th, 2013
8:10 pm
sailfish @ 7:23
My computer knowledge is really pretty limited. I reckon I’ll just try to ride it out and maybe the AJC can fix their problems. I don’t spend a whole lot of time here anymore, anyway.
JamVet
January 26th, 2013
8:13 pm
tibby doing his Charlie Sheen imitation is precious.
And 2006, 2008 and 2012 ask what is he babbling about?
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
January 26th, 2013
8:19 pm
I’m beginning to think that English isn’t AmVet’s native language.
Either that, or he has some serious brown-outs between the ears.
JamVet
January 26th, 2013
8:31 pm
tibby, WINNING!
Who cares if it is only 25% of the time?!
You’re doing a heckuva job, tibby!
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
January 26th, 2013
8:36 pm
Confirmed.
Not his native language AND brownouts.
bluecoat
January 26th, 2013
8:51 pm
I can hear/see it now.”mission accomplished”mission accomplished” was that an echo?No just Georgie screwing up again.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
January 26th, 2013
9:05 pm
How about al qaeda is “on the run?’
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
January 26th, 2013
9:14 pm
bluecoat, in case you missed it (and of course you did), the “Mission Accomplished” claim and banner were for the mission which defeated the Iraqi military forces and from which that carrier was coming home.
Which of course was accomplished.
Cherry-picking your statements is not allowed on this site without push back.
bluecoat
January 26th, 2013
9:25 pm
I was making the statement in reference to attacking Iran also.Defeated Iraqi forces at that time?
td
January 26th, 2013
9:42 pm
bluecoat
January 26th, 2013
9:25 pm
I was making the statement in reference to attacking Iran also.Defeated Iraqi forces at that time?
Yes, we totally demolished the worlds 5th largest military in about a 1 month span while inflicting minimal human cost on us and inflicting serious cost on them while at the same time we were protected from any other military in the world from attacking us. This is the reason it is so important to not cut our military spending.
bluecoat
January 26th, 2013
10:43 pm
TD go crawl back under the bed.You want spending cuts.but you don’t want spending cuts.Minimal human cost. After you thought they were defeated.I do not know the deaths or wounded or cost for this created war.You can look it up.
td
January 26th, 2013
10:49 pm
bluecoat
January 26th, 2013
10:43 pm
TD go crawl back under the bed.You want spending cuts.but you don’t want spending cuts.Minimal human cost. After you thought they were defeated.I do not know the deaths or wounded or cost for this created war.You can look it up.
The cost was less then the price we paid to allow the moochers to eat in this country during the same time period.
bluecoat
January 26th, 2013
10:57 pm
Tiberius are you pushing or pulling?Washing ot hanging out?Tibby huh.
bluecoat
January 26th, 2013
11:03 pm
TD I’m off to bed.You have a good night.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
January 27th, 2013
12:26 am
bluecoat, you don’t even know which country we attacked.
What does that say about you?
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
January 27th, 2013
8:40 am
Young voters clinging to the Democratic Party will cry one day, and pull out their hair when they realize the costs of trillions upon trillions in debt and the effects of inflation. But for now, they’re busy tweeting and getting their politics from Comedy Central. When they wake, don’t be surprised if they start talking about death panels for everyone older than 60. By then, of course, it’ll be too late.
So the Democratic message — give us free stuff because rich, white guys are evil — is effective.
Yeah, we already have one party of stupid.
JamVet
January 27th, 2013
8:56 am
That’s cute,
Prognostications of doom and destruction from the losers who said, “Romney in a landslide”.
Neocons – Winning! Duh!
bluecoat
January 27th, 2013
9:03 am
No let me guess.Duh, South Ossetia possibly.OR Tibby town?
Rafe Hollister preparing for an Obamanist America
January 27th, 2013
9:05 am
Dedicated to all the Dems, especially getalife, celebrating Jindal’s speach to the GOP
Bill Maher, low rent, non talent, ant-American, godless heathen, comedian had this to say about the takers:
“We have 23.5 percent dirt bags in America,” the HBO Real Time host surprisingly said. “It just seems like there’s less people pulling the wagon and more people in the wagon, and at some point the wagon is going to break”
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/#ixzz2JBUV0zj1
Be nice if he would get that message through to the Enabler in Chief, Barry the First. Seems Maher thinks at least half Barry’s voters are “dirt bags”.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
January 27th, 2013
9:12 am
Harkin’s retirement further improves an already encouraging landscape for Senate Republicans in 2014, giving them a credible chance to win back the majority. Seven Senate races are being contested in states that Mitt Romney carried last year — six them carried by Romney by double-digit margins. With Harkin running for re-election, Republicans would have faced long odds in winning his seat. But now, Republicans feel like they have a decent chance at picking up an open seat in a perennial battleground state.
Rafe Hollister preparing for an Obamanist America
January 27th, 2013
9:15 am
Michael Hastings, a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine who wrote that he “fell into the trap of asking Obama soft questions.”
In his book, Hastings notes:
That’s the presence of Obama, even on the press corps, even on the people who follow him every day. When they’re near him, they lose their minds sometimes. They start behaving in ways that are juvenile and amateurish, and they swoon.
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/randy-hall/2013/01/26/white-house-press-corps-fawning-over-obama-fox-news-panel-charges#ixzz2JBXmNlqJ
And we wonder why America is in the shape it is! Swooning, slobbering, pandering, prostrating, and bowing before our Imperial President is not flattering.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
January 27th, 2013
9:49 am
Libya’s upheaval the past two years helped lead to the ongoing conflict in Mali, and now Mali’s war threatens to wash back and further hike Libya’s instability. Fears are growing that post-Moammar Gadhafi Libya is becoming an incubator of turmoil, with an overflow of weapons and Islamic jihadi militants operating freely, ready for battlefields at home or abroad.
Notice how the liberals claim this as a “victory?”
Sailfish
January 27th, 2013
10:31 am
“Swooning, slobbering, pandering, prostrating, and bowing before our Imperial President”
That’s a most ludicrous and ridiculous assertion; so what if he is a likeable president unlike the previous arrogant, misinformed, gut feeling, illegitimate war making failure?
Rafe Hollister preparing for an Obamanist America
January 27th, 2013
10:42 am
Sailfish
Likeability is no excuse for not doing their jobs. A skeptic free press is essential to a free America. Can you imagine how the press would have hounded Bush, if he were responsible for Benghazi and Fast and Furious, yet Barry never has to answer a question about either. Remember San Donaldson screaming at Reagan or Dan Rather at Nixon, when no answers were forthcoming or they got the runaround. Now, the press just smiles and grins at the evasion they get from the Obama Regime.
Sailfish
January 27th, 2013
10:46 am
rafe
What’s obama going to say that hillary didn’t? What’s obama going to say that eric holder didn’t?
Why did busn not say anything about valerie plame? Why did bush and cheney have to testify in secret for the 911 commission?
See you really have a selective memory.
Sailfish
January 27th, 2013
10:53 am
This obsession with benghazi is retarded! Four people are dead and thats a fact, what is being covered up?
If you really want to take issue with something, how’s about jobs? Before the election it was jobs, jobs, jobs, now it’s immigration, guns, and manmade cliffs – let’s get back to the jobs, please!
indigo
January 27th, 2013
11:15 am
Rafe – 9:15 “Swooning, slobering, pandering, prostrating, and bowing”.
And, exactly HOW is that Obama’s fault?
Rafe Hollister preparing for an Obamanist America
January 27th, 2013
11:35 am
indigo… who blamed Obama? Just saying, that we are not getting the truth about much of anything anymore because the Obama loving media are not interested in anything that would reflect poorly on their man, and he will not take any questions from any alternative media.
Sailfish… Obama could tell us why there was no military available to come to the rescue, during a 7 hour span of the attack. We have military units closer than 7 hours. He could tell us why he blamed the video for two weeks, when he knew the incident had nothing to do with the video. Why did he have to lie, would be a good question? Why was Stevens in Benghazi, what was so important for him to be there, even though he himself questioned the lack of security? Who sent Susan Rice out to lie for the regime, who altered the talking points and why did they change them to delete references about terrorist attacks. None of this was answered by Hillary, so who is going to answer it?
Or, maybe you are like some other halfwit I saw in the vent, saying the people don’t need answers to everything they want to know about. Sounds like that guy would be a good loyal Hugo Chavez supporter.
Bush was asked repeatedly about Valerie Plame, who was not an undercover agent, BTW. He was asked who outed her, why, what he knew about Scooter Libby, blah, blah, and turns out he didn’t know anything and it was not the Bush administration that outed her. So, your comparison is flawed, as usual.
Dusty
January 27th, 2013
11:48 am
Well, folks, time to stop the swooning, slobering, pandering, prostrating and bowing. You really should be at church. Listen to a fine sermon, enjoy the music, think about how to do things better. Relax and enjoy your God given freedom with appreciation…
While you are “at it”, you might realize that Chambliss has been doing a good job but is getting tired. We should thank him for his service.
We should also be thankful we had Bush and Cheney. They are two men dedicated to this country and led us through the hard times following 9/11. What they did was to protect this country. We should thank them.
Now we have President Obama, elected by the people. I do not agree with most of his policies but calling him names won’t change that. Our founders gave us legal ways to communicate and we should do that with consideration.
So give it some thought on this cold quiet day. It will help your blood pressure if nothing else.
Sailfish
January 27th, 2013
12:00 pm
rafe
Uh-huh
@@
January 27th, 2013
12:40 pm
At the neighbor’s place we have:
JamVet – Not a
member of the Stupid,
Backward and
Insulting Party.
I won’t call him stupid….but backward (redundant) and insulting?
Oooooh yeah….without a doubt.
schnirt
I’ve been following a discussion (elsewhere) regarding the fed’s manipulation of interest rates. Interesting.
It’s like baby boomers are paying for government’s mistakes (greed). So what else is new?
Just Saying..
January 27th, 2013
12:44 pm
Dusty, have a listen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4yVfQ7lQsg
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
January 27th, 2013
12:46 pm
Further proof that Obamacare will end health insurance coverage for the very people they were wanting to help.
Know a friend who has a daughter working at Waffle House – very low wages, but just enough to get by and still have health insurance coverage for about $12 every two weeks. She just received a notice with her W2 that stated that due to new regulations in Obamacare, Waffle House can no longer supply their low-cost option for health insurance, because it doesn’t cover everything mandated in Obamacare. The new insurance is now over $50 every two weeks, meaning that person can no longer afford to have health coverage and has to drop theirs with no alternative.
Way to go, you blithering idiot liberals and President Incompetent.
MarkV
January 27th, 2013
12:49 pm
Poor conservatives on this blog. One might even feel sorry for them.
What they are reduced to is a denial of reality (“Republicans are on the move and it is forward.” “Ours is letting liberals cry.” “Yet, liberals seem to slumber. “), excuses (“Because the Dems (with the full support of the press) have been successful in pinning the blame for our budget woes on the Republicans in the court of popular opinion, “) and belligerence in foreign affairs. (“Give war a chance. And if Iran wants a nuklar bomb so bad, why don’t we just drop one on them?”)
How simply frightful! How humiliating! How delightful!
But in the end, the reality still has a way of breaking through. (“Now we have President Obama, elected by the people.” “We’ll just have to wait awhile, about four more years.”)
independent thinker
January 27th, 2013
1:02 pm
Saxby has had enough of the Stupid Party that has shown their stupidity repeatedly in the past year and has let the wackos take over control of the party by:
1. Reelecting a clown who ran the worst national convention and campaign in GOP history- Rinse a Prebuss;
2. Picking a draft dodger tax cheat for president who wrote off 47% of the electorate;
3. Running a presidential campaign that was totally inept and appeared to be run by a candidate with no business skills;
4. Picking a vice president who was caught lying on day one and had to hide behind his mother to get votes only to lose his own city and county;
5. Having a Senate leader whose only tool for compromise is the silent fillibuster until he cries uncle and calls Biden for help;
6. Being a bunch of puppets for the NRA;
7. Letting Rand Paul show how inept he would be as a pretend president on national TV and
8. Dissing all veterans.