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VSthe girl, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder – hard to define but we know it when we see it. I thought about it as two things happened in our state last week with prominent Republicans.
In Atlanta, hundreds of friends and supporters gathered to honor a calm man who embodies the class, former US Senator and longtime Republican Johnny Isakson. The event raised nearly $ 1 million for the Isakson Initiative, a non-profit organization named in honor of the senator with Parkinson’s disease. The new organization will be dedicated to funding research into Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological diseases. Most of the state’s top political figures were in attendance – Republicans and Democrats. It was beyond partisan politics.
Two days earlier, the old meadows. Donald Trump flew to the Georgia National Fairgrounds in Perry and continued his relentless barrage of insults against Governor Brian Kemp (“A total disaster for electoral integrity”); Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan (“Terrible”) and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (“A Very Strange Guy”) – whom he all blames for costing him his re-election.
There is no doubt that Trump created a deep schism within the Republican Party that Johnny Isakson helped build. My mail over the past year has taken two forms. Many longtime Conservative voters say they are tired of Trump’s hyperbole and personal slurs and wouldn’t vote for him next time, assuming he shows up. And then there are those who tell me that they will not participate in the election next year rather than vote to re-elect Brian Kemp. How that helps the Republican’s chances in Georgia in the 2022 election is beyond me.
Call the Democrats whatever you like – liberals, socialists, radicals – just don’t call them divided because they aren’t. Remember, Stacey Abrams lost the 2018 gubernatorial race to Brian Kemp by just 55,000 votes out of almost 4 million votes. It’s a little over one percent. His case for 2022 was not hurt by Trump’s odd comments to Perry.
Referring to Kemp, Trump said of Abrams: “Stacey, would you like to take his place? It’s good for me. Of course having him, I think, might be better than having your current governor, if you want to know the truth. It could very well be better. It could very well happen, thanks to such remarks.
Johnny Isakson was a Republican when you could throw the party in a phone booth. He was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1976. At that time, there were four Republicans in the State Senate out of 56 members and 23 in the House with 157 Democrats.
Isakson was made Minority Leader in 1983. He ran for governor against Democrat Zell Miller in 1990 and lost. In 1992 he was elected to the Georgia State Senate, and in 1996 Miller, a very partisan and education-oriented, appointed his former nemesis as governor as head of the State School Board of Education. It was a wonder at the time.
Isakson recalls: “Georgia turned around. Scores got better, schools got better, people got better. Just because someone is your opponent today doesn’t mean they can’t be your best friend tomorrow. State interests first, party politics second? Imagine that.
Isakson succeeded Newt Gingrich as the United States’ representative in Georgia’s 6th District after the volatile speaker died in 1998 and resigned. Then there were two terms in the United States House and two terms and a partial third in the United States Senate until health problems caught up with him in 2019.
From his first day in politics until his last, Johnny Isakson was a very effective lawmaker who could go across the aisle and get things done. And he did so without being silent or compromising his convictions.
He was one of the few people in Washington to speak out against Trump for his bashing of the late senator and former prisoner of war, John McCain. “It’s deplorable what he said,” Isakson then remarked. “It will be deplorable in seven months if he continues to say it and I will continue to speak out.” Trump never returned to Isakson. He knew better. It was a battle he was not going to win.
We will never see Johnny Isakson again, and we are poorer for that. The Republican Party he helped build into the majority party in Georgia is now plagued by finger-strokes, slurs, threats, and headline-seeking stars. As far as I’m concerned, the whole crowd is just a bunch of RINOS. Johnny Isakson was and is the real deal.
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