Can a Republican runoff for the U.S. Senate still save the Democrats?

[flaminbats]

One of his longtime Georgia Senate colleagues says the joke among old-timers each time Isakson helps rubber-stamp a far-right Bush policy goes something like: "This never would've happened if Johnny Isakson were alive."

One of the competing theories to explain Isakson's rightward swerve in Congress holds that, like Miller before him, Isakson has become more conservative with age. But it seems somehow unlikely, for example, that the same legislator who went out on a limb in 1994 to condemn his home county's notorious anti-gay resolution would have swung so far in the other direction that he feels compelled to help lead the charge to block gay marriage.

Isakson told CL as recently as June 19 that his voting record between the Georgia General Assembly and Congress has been consistent. It's just that he's had more opportunities to support conservative legislation in Washington than he had in the Democratic-controlled Statehouse. He plays down his reputation as a consensus-builder and a deal-broker, instead saying, "I'm known for getting things done."

A more compelling theory, offered by a fellow Cobb legislator, is that Isakson recognizes the political necessity of satisfying his right-wing Republicans.

"Johnny's had problems with statewide primaries before," the lawmaker observes. "He's voting more to the right so that he wouldn't have to re-fight his primary every time."

Isakson lost a 1996 U.S. Senate primary to businessman Guy Millner, whose main political asset seemed to be his hard-line anti-abortion stance. The abortion issue seems to be the one area where Isakson is holding to his moderate beliefs.

He now claims to back a pro-life agenda, but his record is at odds with that assertion. Although he helped pass the recent "partial-birth" abortion ban, Isakson has long been known as pro-choice. Cain has been hammering Isakson almost daily over his congressional votes in favor of the RU-486 abortion pill, and against Bush's restoration of the so-called "Mexico City Policy" to deny foreign aid to family-planning clinics that provide abortion advice.

Most recently, Isakson supported a failed amendment that would have allowed abortions at U.S. military bases abroad. As Cain sneers in his current TV ad: "Sounds like the old Johnny, the pro-choice Johnny, is back."

Sounds good to us.

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