A quick jolt: Chambliss has Isakson’s back on ‘death panels’

On the road this morning, so just a couple highlights from overnight:

U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss spoke to the Macon Chamber of Commerce on health care Wednesday. He opposes it, of course, and claims that President Barack Obama’s ultimate goal is to have everyone under a government-run health insurance policy.

His remarks were no surprise. But Chambliss put himself at the side of Georgia colleague Johnny Isakson when it came to some of the more drastic interpretations about the Democratic plan.

This from the Macon Telegraph:

Chambliss also distanced himself from comments made by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who wrote on her Facebook page last week that Obama’s healthcare proposals would lead to “death boards” who would deny care based the “level of productivity in society” of that patient.

“It’s a great country we live in, everyone has an opinion,” Chambliss said with a grin. “Governor Palin’s got her right to what she thinks it says. I don’t necessarily agree with that.”

My former AJC colleague Tom Baxter has this I-should-have-written-that opening on his Southern Political Report:

Eulogizing the late US Sen. Herman Talmadge at his funeral in 2002, former U.S. senator Sam Nunn recalled a meeting with his state’s senator not long after he came to Washington.

Nunn recalled that when he mentioned casually that he answered most of his mail, but ignored “nuts” like those who believed in flying saucers, Talmadge spit vigorously into the spittoon by his desk and gave him a solemn warning:

“If you don’t get the nut vote, you can’t carry a county in Georgia,” the state’s senior senator said.

Somewhere in the Great Beyond, Talmadge may have reached for his spittoon again this week after US Sen. Johnny Isakson invoked the “nut” word.

WXIA-TV had an interesting report out of Jackson, Ga., that included one local’s assessment of U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, a Blue Dog Democrat, and his handling of the health care issue.

“I think people are very very leery of the massive changes the government is talking about. I think Jim Marshall is very mindful of things like this,” the TV station quoted Debbie Moon of Butts County as saying. 
”It is very shrewd and it has enabled him to get reelected.”

Moon is chairman of the Butts County Republican party.

On the national scene, you may want to take a gander at this Washington Post article:

In his first few months after leaving office, former vice president Richard B. Cheney threw himself into public combat against the “far left” agenda of the new commander in chief. More private reflections, as his memoir takes shape in slashing longhand on legal pads, have opened a second front against Cheney’s White House partner of eight years, George W. Bush.

Cheney’s disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. By habit, he listens more than he talks, but Cheney broke form when asked about his regrets.

“In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him,” said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney’s reply. “He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that.

The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming. It was clear that Cheney’s doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times — never apologize, never explain — and Bush moved toward the conciliatory.”

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