Your morning jolt: ‘I could have been an impact player,’ Ralph Reed says

So far as we know, Denny Schaffer with WGKA (920AM) – a conservative talk radio station based in Buckhead — landed the only one-on-one interview with Ralph Reed following his Wednesday decision to skip a run for Congress.

Schaffer has this link to the full interview, from which we plucked a few tidbits.

Reed said he was confident he could have run a “very competitive race” to replace U.S. Rep. John Linder, but he would have been forced to put his new organization, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, in storage. Said Reed:

“I realized that I couldn’t do both. I had to decide. I was either going to help put 50 to 100 people like me in the U.S. Senate, Congress and state houses, or I was going to spend the next eight or nine months focusing solely on me. I ultimately decided the country was more important than me having a congressional seat.”

On what might have been:

“It would be pretty exciting if I could be part of a freshman class that was back in the majority in the House. Had I done that, and had I won, I think I could have been an impact player in Congress.”

And on the temptation to engage in new enterprises:

“The Bible says if you put your hand to the plow, and then you take your eye off the task at hand, you will plow uneven furrows. And I believe my hand is on the plow of building Faith and Freedom Coalition. And you can’t get distracted, even by great opportunities. Remember, the enemy doesn’t come to you with bad ideas. It always looks good.”

Neither Shaffer nor Reed brought up the words “Jack Abramoff.”

But over at Blog for Democracy, Tom Crawford did – expounding this morning on the lost synergy between a Reed congressional race and a new film on Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist doing a five-year stretch for bribery of public officials and such:

Abramoff is a longtime friend of Reed who worked with Reed to advance the interests of Native American gambling casinos, among other clients. Those Abramoff connections helped sink Reed’s candidacy in 2006, when Casey Cagle beat him like a tom-tom in the Republican primary.

“Casino Jack,” a big-budget Hollywood production, is sure to dredge up a lot of memories of the Abramoff years. The movie’s cast includes Kevin Spacey as Abramoff, Christian Campbell as Reed, Jon Lovitz as Adam Kidan, Spencer Garrett as Tom DeLay, Daniel Kash as Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis (who was found murdered after selling his gambling cruise ship business to Abramoff and Kidan), David Fraser as Karl Rove, Jeffrey R. Smith as Grover Norquist, and Brian Paul as Sen. John McCain.

The Plum Line, a D.C. blog, has put U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, the Macon Democrat, firmly in the “no” camp when the next vote on health care is taken:

Marshall is one of 39 Dems who voted No last time that reform proponents were hoping to flip to Yes, in order to make up ground and get to 216 votes. The confirmation that Marshall will vote No reduces that pool a bit.

On the same topic, Randy Lewis, a public relations specialist and conservative activist who lives in Dunwoody, reports receiving a robo-call urging support for the Democratic position on health care.

“The script was written to incite anger with comments about 39 percent increases in premiums, health care executives making millions and benefit cuts and denial of service. The message then referred the listener to the main congressional switchboard to demand passage of health care reform,” Lewis reports.

That’s an interesting waste of money, given that Lewis lives in U.S. Rep. Tom Price’s very Republican district.

We told you yesterday that Georgia Democrats had asked a U.S. House ethics committee to resume its investigation into U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, the Republican candidate for governor who has decided to spend a few extra weeks in Congress to help block the health care overhaul.

The probe, to determine whether Deal used his office to help protect his business interests in north Georgia, ended when he announced a March 5 departure from Congress.

Washington Whispers, the political blog operated by U.S. News & World Report, says that – if Republicans intend to keep attacking Democratic lapses such as Charlie Rangel and Eric Massa – “they’ll pitch rocks at a Republican glass house.”

And Deal will be one of the panes. The north Georgia congressman is one of 17 House Republicans that Democrats plan to single out.

Thurbert Baker just made himself more popular in small-town Georgia – not a bad thing when running for governor. This from the Associated Press:

Georgia’s top lawyer says the state must hand over $18 million in disputed sales tax revenue to local governments in the midst of a crippling state budget crunch.

The opinion from Attorney General Thurbert Baker was obtained by The Associated Press.

A spokesman for Gov. Sonny Perdue was critical of the opinion, and said Wednesday the office was analyzing the decision. He declined to say whether they would comply.

But county officials who are grappling with economic woes of their own praised Baker’s opinion which they say could hand them some badly-needed cash.

“Every little bit helps,” said Clint Mueller, legislative director for the Association County Commissioners of Georgia.

Baker delivered the 15-page opinion to Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who had sought legal advice on who had rights to a pot of “unidentifiable” sales tax revenues.

At issue are sales taxes collected by the state without clear information about which local government they belong to. Typically, Georgia collects sales taxes from merchants and then distributes a portion back to the appropriate local government. But some of the sales taxes arrive in state coffers without the information needed to determine which county they belong to.

Icarus over at PeachPundit reports that former Atlanta mayor Sam Massell, the champion of Buckhead, has come out against the formation of Milton County from rebellious north Fulton County.

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