Your daily jolt: ‘You could see riots in the streets,’ says Saxby Chambliss

A newly re-elected President Barack Obama will make a White House appearance early this afternoon to set the tone for negotiations with House Republicans on avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff.

But no pressure. Certainly not from U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, one of the leaders of a bipartisan approach to tackling the question of spending cuts and revenue increases. From an interview with Chambliss in today’s Washington Post:

”I was watching the news this morning and looking at Greece. That’s exactly where we’re headed. There are riots in the streets. It’s either going to be done by us, using this opportunity we have now, or the people we sell our bonds to are going to [respond]. You could see riots in the streets of the United States if we don’t do this right. We have the opportunity right now, and it’s imperative that we do, primarily through a $4-5 trillion package over 10 years.”

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Several thousand residents of Georgia would rather see a dead scientist in Congress than a fellow who declares evolution and such to be lies from the pit of hell. Via this morning’s Athens Banner-Herald:

Charles Darwin, the 19th-century naturalist who laid the foundations for evolutionary theory, received nearly 4,000 write-in votes in Athens-Clarke County in balloting for the 10th Congressional District seat retained Tuesday by five-year incumbent Republican Rep. Paul Broun….

“I can’t ever remember seeing a (write-in ballot) report that long,” said Athens-Clarke County Elections Supervisor Gail Schrader after releasing the full list of write-in numbers to local media Thursday morning.

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Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed quietly gathered a group of core supporters on Thursday to assure them that he had no intention of accepting any appointment from the new Barack Obama administration and would press on with his 2013 re-election bid.

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In the first 48 hours after Tuesday’s presidential defeat, many Republican eyes are putting immigration at the top of the fix-it list. From today’s Wall Street Journal:

House Speaker John Boehner and other Republicans in Congress said Thursday that they want to consider broad changes to immigration laws next year, after an election in which Hispanic voters turned out in force to help President Barack Obama win a second term.

Columnist Charles Krauthammer may have stirred up the most dust on the topic:

The principal reason [Hispanics] go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants. In securing the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney made the strategic error of (unnecessarily) going to the right of Rick Perry. Romney could never successfully tack back.

For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe — full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement.

In Georgia, immigration activist D.A. King is pushing back. From today’s Marietta Daily Journal:

Nearly half the illegal aliens in the U.S. did not come here illegally. They overstayed temporary visas. For votes, should we ignore visa violations, too? This is how most of the 9/11 terrorists were able to remain here….

Documenting millions of resentful undocumented Democrats is a crack-pot method to elect a Republican President.

Former Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin passed on a link to this Miami Herald article, which she said was passed to her by Manuel Diaz, the former mayor of Miami. It includes the following:

Obama actually won Cuban-Americans on Election Day itself, taking 53 percent of their vote compared to 47 percent for Republican Mitt Romney, who built up a lead among those who cast absentee and early in-person ballots, according to the survey of 4,866 voters conducted by Bendixen & Amandi International.

So Romney narrowly carried Cuban-Americans, 52-48 percent, which is a decrease for Republicans when compared to 2008.

“Obama is picking the Republican lock in Florida,” Fernand Amandi said, noting that Hispanics are Florida’s fastest-growing segment of the electorate.

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Sharon Mitchell, the interim elections director for Fulton County, admitted some problems on Tuesday night, but denies that it was the “debacle” that Secretary of State Brian Kemp said it was:

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State Sen. Doug Stoner, D-Smyrna, reports that he has tried to reach out to Republican Hunter Hill, who defeated him on Tuesday, but hasn’t been successful.

“I had to leave a message,” he said.

Last year, Stoner’s Cobb County district was drawn into Republican Buckhead last year, with Tuesday’s result in mind — part of the Republican quest for a constitutional majority in the Senate. In conceding, Stoner added this:

“The final tally of 52.87 percent to 47.13 percent demonstrates that had this district not been gerrymandered, I may well have won. In fact, I carried the Cobb County portion of the district two-to-one,” Stoner said.

Stoner managed to run slightly better than President Barack Obama in the redrawn District 6, but not by much. While the Cobb County portion of District 6 is 36 percent African-American, that number dropped to 8 percent in Fulton County. In his worst precinct – the wealthy one that includes the Governor’s Mansion and West Paces Ferry Road, Stoner lost to Hill by 80 to 20 percent.

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Just in case you missed the Augusta Chronicle’s after-the-fact, harsh judgment on Lee Anderson, the newspaper’s champion in the effort to oust U.S. Rep. John Barrow, D-Augusta, from the 12th District:

Clearly, the inarticulate Anderson’s strategy of laying low – not debating Barrow and, worse, not making himself available to say much more than “hello” to the media – crippled his campaign and torpedoed his image.

“Lee Anderson ran the worst campaign of all time,” one normally soft-spoken political observer told us.

Yup. Political science teachers may want to use it as a textbook example of what not to do to be elected. Even sympathetic voters were turned off by Anderson’s unavailability to explain himself or his agenda.

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Over at PeachPundit.com, Charlie Harper offers this thought on the same topic:

Twelfth District Republicans have vowed to begin immediately recruiting a higher profile candidate for the 2014 congressional race. Senate President Pro Tem Tommie Williams’ name is floated most often.

He is stepping down as President Pro Tem for the 2013-2014 session of the General Assembly and has remained somewhat coy as to his future plans beyond that. He will likely receive a number of calls from local GOP members inquiring if his desire to work in DC has changed.

Those same folks may want to consider making a call to one other person as well. That person is John Barrow.

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Former President Jimmy Carter this morning will formally join the board of trustees of Mercer University. From the Macon Telegraph:

Carter’s ties to Mercer include a session in his living room in Plains about six years ago with Mercer President Bill Underwood and former university President Kirby Godsey. The three men talked about a large meeting to bring Baptists together. That led to a 2008 convention at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. The event, Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant, also featured former President Bill Clinton, a fellow Baptist.

- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider

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