If you’re a red state Democrat, two things you don’t want dotting your week are an obvious lack of even appearing to be a moderate and the words “under investigation.”
That’s how things are going for their Senate hopeful in Georgia, Michelle Nunn.
Monday started with an Atlanta fundraiser with First Lady Michelle Obama, her first fundraising salvo of the 2014 election cycle. The week continued with Nunn going wheels up to Hollywood to collect checks from elites, whose money she’ll use to tell Georgians she’s not a gilded red carpet Democrat.
For those who’ve followed her campaign since last summer, it’s nothing new. Obama, Reid, Bloomberg, Buffett, Warren, and more have all ponied up to support her campaign – it reads like a cast list for a left-wing version of The Expendables.
She is a Democrat. Raising national dollars is essential to having the resources it takes to wage a competitive campaign in a state that’s hewn red as Georgia has in recent cycles.
That’s the point, though. Michelle Nunn has no credible pretense of being anything more than another Democrat to maintain their majority, and to think otherwise would be to ignore the obvious. There’s no reason to think otherwise.
At Monday’s voter registration rally, the first lady called on Georgia Democrats to saddle up and turn Georgia blue so that the Obama administration could “finish what we’ve started.”
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Whether it’s directed at policies foreign or domestic – comments such as those surely won’t be well-received by the majority of Georgia’s electorate. Or the entire nation’s, for that matter.
It’s out of step with a state that gave more votes to Mitt Romney in 2012 than John McCain in 2008. But Democrats are desperate to flip the seat; the report of Nunn’s Hollywood fundraiser declared her to be an “anointed” candidate for liberal elites this cycle, and the race a “safety seat for the majority,” should incumbents fall elsewhere.
Tell me again how we’re supposed to take Nunn seriously when she says she supports building the Keystone XL Pipeline? That’s the mindset of Democrats, though. And it’s, in part, what’s driving their push to register new voters in Georgia.
More Americans voting and participating in the political process are certainly worthy causes, but news broke yesterday that a piece of their effort is now under investigation by the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
The New Georgia Project, which touts itself as a nonpartisan voter registration group, faces allegations “including forged voter registration applications, forged signatures on some applications, and voters told they were legally required to re-register.”
State House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams heads the effort. She’s donated $500 to Michelle Nunn personally and her political committee has given another $1,000. Years ago, Nunn donated to her campaign, too.
Around and around we go.
Necessary documentation must be turned over by early next week. The larger point, however, is that Michelle Nunn’s campaign is no vehicle for centrism or the dawn of a new era of bipartisan cooperation reticent to the time of her father.
It’s a cynical effort to keep the gavel in Harry Reid’s hands and empower the Obama administration’s agenda over its final two years. The only new era it’s seeking is that of a liberal Georgia and the defeat of conservative policies in a state that’s finally moving forward.
Both short and long-term consequences of that push are dire, if successful. That’s why it mustn’t go unchecked.
Michelle Nunn’s attempts to brand herself anything other than a vehicle of progressivism in Georgia should be called what they are – a farce.
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