Shaking the 'M-word'
Can Johnny Isakson out-conservative the conservatives?
by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry
- Jim Stawniak
- Johnny Isakson, in more reasonable days, as the Democratically appointed state school board chairman in 1998.
Just another example of how, if you wait long enough, nearly every statement made in the heat of a political campaign can later be turned into a punch line.
It's also a reminder of the ironic dilemma in which Isakson -- now the perceived front-runner for the GOP nomination for Miller's U.S. Senate seat -- finds himself.
Widely regarded as the most reasonable, amiable and downright likable Republican lawmaker in Georgia during the long years in which Democrats ruled the political roost, Isakson has found that those qualities aren't exactly selling points among the post-Newt, ditto-headed, conservative hard-liners who control his party these days.
In a political climate in which the Republican "mainstream" is in danger of flowing off the edge of the world, both his primary opponents -- U.S. Rep. Mac Collins and ex-pizza executive Herman Cain -- have taken turns tarring Isakson not with the deadly "L-word," but with the "M-word."
With our country engaged in a global war on terrorism, Collins explains in his stump speeches, "This is no time to send a moderate to the U.S. Senate." Likewise, Cain begins his typical address by praising Isakson as a nice guy who simply isn't a "true conservative."
And so, in recent months, Georgians have been treated to the sorry spectacle of Isakson trying to paint himself as every bit the right-wing meathead as Collins and Cain.
For instance, his campaign website boasts that he supports the appointment of conservative federal judges, making careful use of fundamentalist, anti-abortion code words in explaining that he "strongly support(s) President Bush's view that we need to create a culture of life in America." He has a new TV spot devoted to touting his 26 years of teaching sixth-grade Sunday school classes. On the campaign trail, he's taken to calling Bush's failing Iraq adventure "the ultimate war between good and evil."
But the most embarrassing moment of political pandering had to be when Isakson proclaimed to an auditorium of party faithfuls at the state GOP convention that George W. Bush is "the best president the United States has ever had." Ouch, truly painful.
And yet, anyone who's followed Isakson's congressional career should have noticed his immediate and unquestionable swing to the right following his 1999 election to Newt Gingrich's old House seat.
As soon as he crossed the Beltway, it seemed Isakson began voting in lockstep with the GOP majority, supporting many of the party's more extreme policy positions. The list of his partisan votes is extensive: reviving the "Star Wars" missile defense plan, pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, allowing school prayer during the war on terror, opening the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to drilling, adding a constitutional amendment against flag desecration, posting the Ten Commandments in public buildings, giving tax money to "faith-based initiatives," and so on.
Even though he belongs to the Republican Main Street Partnership, a dwindling group of GOP centrists, Isakson recently co-sponsored the House bill for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. His response to 9/11 was to sponsor a resolution allowing schools to display the words "God bless America." And despite his self-professed commitment to fiscal responsibility in government, he was among the horde of GOP lemmings who voted to make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent.
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.
Latest in News Feature
-
What Atlantans are saying about MLK Day
The city honors the civil rights icon in the streets and online
-
Home invasions plague Capitol View 59
"We feel like sitting ducks"
-
20 People to Watch: Paul Bennecke
T-SPLOST’s biggest cheerleader
- More »
Author Archives
-
State redistricting maps pre-cleared by Justice 6
-
Deal hasn't dodged the feds after all, sez watchdog 4
A recent memo shows the feds are still looking into Deal's dealings
- More »
-
Why are eco-fascists trying to ban incandescent bulbs? 38
-
Peachtree-Pine to be free at last 40
Homeless, city benefit from Task Force's ouster
-
Exploring Atlanta's modern ruins 22
A new subculture finds beauty in decay
Comments (0)