In 2008, Freedomworks named only two men as “Legislative Entrepreneurs of the Year.” The men were Florida Speaker Marco Rubio and Georgia State Representative Tom Graves.

We all know who Marco Rubio is. We need to know who Tom Graves is. He is running for Congress in Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, being vacated by Congressman Nathan Deal.

Tom Graves is such a solid pro-entrepreneur conservative, he was the only Republican state legislator nationwide asked to speak at the 9/12 National Tea Party. The only one. He was also the American Legislative Exchange Council’s “Legislator of the Year” in 2009, before the ALEC coup that put squishes in charge.

But if you really want to know who Tom Graves is, you need to know about his jobs bill in the Georgia legislature. He proposed it last year and the legislature buried it. Why? It was too free market and put entrepreneurial interests ahead of large corporations. How dare a Republican be for the little guy, the start up, and the entrepreneur. Tom is and he is unapologetic about it.

At a time Georgia is running a huge deficit, Tom Graves‘ JOBS bills (Jobs, Opportunity, and Business Success Act of 2009) will cut taxes, give tax credits, and incentivize private business hirings. Unlike the Obama stimulus plan, Tom Graves‘ intends to create private sector jobs. It’s no wonder the National Federation of Independent Business named him a “Guardian of Small Business.” It’s Tom Graves’s passion.

Tom Graves is running for Congress. He is going to jump into the special election to fill Nathan Deal’s seat. That election will probably be held the same day as the primary for the November election. Whoever wins the seat will win the general election because the seat is solidly Republican.

The problem is there are 9 people in the race and too many conservatives can get a moderate elected. And let me tell you — there are a few moderates in the race that could win it and we’d be worse off.

There are several good people in the race, but conservatives need to unite behind one to ensure a conservative gets elected. Please join me in rallying around Tom Graves for Congress. The Club For Growth is aggressively supporting him. Various pro-life and pro-entrepreneurial groups are too.

RedState activists need a guy like this.

In 2008, only two legislators were named “Legislative Entrepreneurs” Marco Rubio and Tom Graves. Let’s send Marco to the Senate and Tom to the House.

March began with white coated doctors at the White House, unable to reconcile the lies of a rabid socialized-medicine hound, committing malpractice by failing to first do no harm by clothing the big-eared, self-described mutt in a strait jacket.

We hope Sandra Bullock Blind Sides Oscar’s dogs tonight, but Braves-Gamecock hopes the madness continues with his undergraduate alma mater’s Terriers making the Big dance for the first time:

Since moving to Division I in 1995, the Wofford men’s basketball team has never made the NCAA tournament.

But this might be the year.

“I would streak back to Radford if that were to happen,” said Wofford coach Mike Young, a Radford High School graduate.

Young, 47, has steered Wofford (21-8, 13-3 Southern Conference) to its first 20-win season at the Division I level.

“There’s a lot of things to enjoy with a Heineken in hand this spring, but still a lot to accomplish,” said Young, an Emory & Henry graduate.

The winner of Thursday’s game between Wofford and visiting College of Charleston (19-9, 13-3) will clinch the SoCon regular-season title — and an automatic bid to the NIT, should that team not win the automatic NCAA bid that goes to the SoCon tournament champ. Wofford has never been to the NIT, either.

Wofford, a Spartanburg, S.C., school with just 1,439 students, has won eight straight since losing to Bobby Cremins’ College of Charleston squad 70-68 last month.

Wofford’s first win over our law school alma mater’s Gamecocks since 1939 earlier this year defined the regular season.

Last year’s leading Southern Conference  March Madness star now an NBA sensation

I thought Davidson’s Stephen Curry might have been too small to make in the land of giants. Happily, I was wrong…

Burning question for April: Will Cockstradamus be right about Tiger at the Masters and baseball happening every Spring. I think so.

We can see the State Capitol from atop the rock MLK memorialized, but what we can’t see and wish we could, are:

Bleeding heart liberal public college professors willing to bleed their fat wallets to ensure that more low income students won’t face tuition hikes due to the Peach State’s massive budget shortfall;

Ethics legislation passed into law that protects us from rotten peaches, despite the lack of recent headlines about lobbyist-legislator incest.; and

Rep. Stephanie Stuckey Benfield’s (D-85) criminal records expungement bill passed into law.

Camel-not’s King doesn’t know Jack

(H/T to Rush Limbaugh’s parody with Bill Clinton as Merlin the Magician suggesting that King Obama and his square pegs’ poor fit at JFK’s Round Table.)

Jack Kennedy wouldn’t have prosecuted Justice Department lawyers and the CIA interrogators they advised for swabbing the nose of 911’s architect; Navy Seals that rubbed the tummy of terrorist murderers; nor read  the BVD-bomber Miranda rights while dismissing charges against ACORN pimps and New Black Panther voter intimidation thugs.

Evan Bayh wouldn’t have felt the need to give up a safe senate seat due to disgust with a JFK-led Democratic Party. One only wishes Bayh had the courage to have waved bye-bye to the blood-sucking vampire of a Dem-o-Bat party rather than bemoaning a supposed “broken” Washington just as We the People were exerting our will to fix D.C.

This all reminds this rooster of H. L. Menchen’s description of the World’s Oldest political party as jackals worshipping jack asses.

Finally, with more hat tips to Rush and Mark Steyn: Want to see a non-strait-jacketed ObamaCare future? See Greece:

While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care “summit,” thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen - because they’re part of the same story. It’s just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They’re at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter 20 (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter 17 or 18.

What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they’ve reached the next stage in social democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over. The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1 – or just over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of about 1.3: 10 grandparents have six kids have four grandkids – i.e., the family tree is upside down. Demographers call 1.3 “lowest-low” fertility – the point from which no society has ever recovered. And, compared with Spain and Italy, Greece has the least-worst fertility rate in Mediterranean Europe.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Congressman Nathan Deal (R-GA) is resigning from the House of Representatives to focus on his gubernatorial run in Georgia. At least that is what he is saying.

At a time that every vote counts on health care, Deal resigning means the Democrats have one less vote they have to pick up to take over 1/6th of our economy.

There is a larger issue here that I think people are missing. Nathan Deal is under an ethics investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives relating to questionable contracts between a business Deal owns and the Georgia state government.

The Ethics Committee found Charlie Rangel in breach of ethics rules and never likes to just find on party at fault. The odds are really good that the Ethics Committee would use Deal to show it was bipartisan and evenhanded.

Because Deal is resigning his seat, the investigation into his business *poof* goes away. He won’t have to deal with a finding that he breached ethics rules to complicate his gubernatorial run.

What he will have to deal with, however, is upending Georgia politics to make it all about himself.

There will now be a special election to fill the rest of his term. Under Georgia law, if an elected official runs for another seat with a term starting before the existing office’s term ends, the candidate must resign from his present seat. Two state representatives are running for Deal’s congressional seat. If they decide to run in the special election too, they will have to resign from Georgia’s legislature while it is in session. That would raise the costs of special elections.

And to bring this all home, it also means the Democrats have one less vote they have to struggle to get to pass health care. Nathan Deal decided to make it all about himself and in the process is making it easier for Democrats to pass Obamacare and harder for Georgia to save money.

Well played. Deal, by the way, was a Democrat who jumped to the GOP in order to save himself back in the mid-90’s.

RedState supports Karen Handel and you should too.

John Linder, chief proponent and sponsor of the Fair Tax in the United States Congress, represents the 7th Congressional District in Georgia.

Just a few minutes ago, Linder announced his retirement from Congress.

The seat is solidly Republican. This will be an interesting race.

Yesterday I gave you background on Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine and why I think Republican Primary voters must unite to defeat him.

Let me give you some more today.

Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) is one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress. He is unapologetic in his demands for smaller government. He has no shame in defying Republicans leaders in Congress, routinely voting against the party and in favor of budget cutting legislation. The guy is a conservative hero in Congress.

Last year, after Georgia’s Lt. Governor dropped out of the Georgia Governor’s race, the presumption was that Lynn Westmoreland would jump into the race and become the front runner. John Oxendine started calling Westmoreland repeatedly. The calls became so regular and so harassing, Congressman Westmoreland finally had to tell Oxendine to stop calling because Westmoreland would not under any circumstance ever endorse Oxendine.

Let’s step back for just a minute.

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Editorial Note: Just to be clear, this is my personal view. At RedState, we would not support the Democrat. In fact, I would not write supportively of the Democrat at all even were Ox the nominee. RedState’s position is and has always been to support the conservative in the primary and the Republican in the general. That’s not changing. But by God I hope people realize just how awful Oxendine is and deny him the GOP nomination in favor of someone who will not be an embarrassment. — Erick

I’ll tell you bluntly, I will vote for former Georgia Governor and potential Democratic nominee Roy Barnes over Republican John Oxendine, Georgia’s Insurance Commissioner now running for Governor. At least with Roy Barnes we’d get no worse than Sonny Perdue and would know honestly what we are getting.

John Oxendine is Georgia’s Rod Blagojevich, complete with bad hair. If the Georgia GOP were to nominate him, the party would be committing suicide.

What I would much prefer is one of the candidates who has always been a Republican. In fact, here at RedState, we have endorsed Georgia’s former Secretary of State, Karen Handel. Nonetheless, I would love to actually see Georgia get a Republican Governor — not just a guy with an “R” next to his name, but a small government, fiscal conservative, who will not wind up embarrassing us through scandal and, more likely than not, impeachment.

I specifically do not want a politically malleable charlatan who will say or do anything to get elected. And that is precisely what I see in Oxendine — a man who woos some with tales of Jesus and others with whatever sort of pandering he can.

Let’s roll the tape.

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President Obama could learn a lesson or two from the lyrics of my favorite country music singer, Coweta County native Alan Jackson.

In Jackson’s “Here In the Real World,” he sings sadly about how life doesn’t always turn out how you’d hoped, like it does in the movies.

On the silver screen, the song lyrics state, “cowboys don’t cry and heroes don’t die. And good always wins again and again.”

When it comes to dealing with terrorism, such as the attempted airplane attack on Christmas Day, Obama seems to believe in the movie version of reality where the bad guys are always foiled in the end.

But here in the real world, Al Queda has cells across the globe intent on attacking Americans. They’re plotting every minute of every day, and they see it as a war on the United States even if President Obama doesn’t.

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This morning I had the opportunity to interview Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA).

(Surfing through RedState, I see that Isakson has mixed reviews among commenters.  Many posts have referred to him as a RINO and are critical of his conservative credentials.)

The purpose of this interview was to write an article for a real estate trade magazine.  I will also use the interview for my real estate column on examiner.com.

So the interview focused primarily on real estate topics and issues affecting REALTORS (yes, I know it sounds boring… but stay with me a minute) 

As many RedState members are aware, Senator Isakson had a very successful real estate career in Cobb County, GA.

Johnny Isakson was the first REALTOR elected to the US Senate and received a tremendous amount of support from the National Association of REALTORS.

For the record:  Prior to this morning’s phone interview, I had never spoken to the Senator and I am not affiliated with his campaign.  However, I am a REALTOR and thought it was necessary to disclose this to you. 

In my background research, I read that he was originally a pro-abortion candidate, and eventually changed his position. (I moved to Georgia in 2004 and was not familiar with his early political career)

He also initially supported TARP, however, opposed the second wave of funding.

There have been several issues he supported before he was against them.

I think that’s why I am having a hard time defining Isakson politically. 

For example, he has had an excellent track record on 2^nd Amendment issues, but then he supports Eric Holder for attorney general. 

He stresses less government spending, but supported many of the bailouts in the banking industry. 

He is opposed to the health care bill, but loses conservatives with his support of “end of life” counseling.

I will be making some more in-depth points about our interview in another diary on, but here are some of my initial reactions to the interview.

1. His campaing staff was excellent to deal with.  I sent an email to his campaign website requesting an interview.  As an unknown writer for an obscure website, I was surprised they granted me an interview and how promptly it was arranged.  Overall, Isakson seems to be a very accessible politician.
2. Senator Isakson is a likable and respectful guy.  He treated me professionally and I never felt like he was talking down to me.  I can see why he is successful in real estate and politics.
3. I think the REALTOR in him has made him more pragmatic than many conservatives would like.  In real estate, we can’t always get everything we want for our clients.  For example, in the current market, I would rather see a seller take a little less for their home, than completely lose the deal.  That seems to be Isakson’s approach on some of the issues.  However, this type of approach in politics can alienate us pretty quickly.
4. He definitely knows his real estate and he is a strong asset for the National Association of REALTORS. 
5. He is not the perfect conservative candidate, and he is willing to cross party lines and support some liberal causes.

Overall, I think he is an effective politician for Georgia.  He is realistic enough to know that he can’t take the conservative base for granted, especially in this upcoming election.

Once I have gone through the interview some more, I will post some of his responses to my question.  However, keep in mind that this interview was primarily for REALTORS, so we did not get into many of the issues that member of RedState might want me to ask.

Hopefully, I will have another opportunity to interview him as the election gets closer.

Right now the news is breaking across the state that Karen Handel is resigning as Secretary of State to focus solely on the gubernatorial race. Atlanta media outlet WSB just broke the news despite an alleged 2pm embargo on the story.

Given all the ethical issues of the guys sticking around relating to fundraising and all the issues they are trying to raise attacking her for overseeing the primary and general election while being a candidate for Governor, this takes some serious news stories out of commission over the next few months.

With Senate President Pro Tempore Eric Johnson and Handel both giving up their seats so they can both raise money and avoid sticky ethical issues, this puts the spotlight squarely on State Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine who is about to come under a sustained media assault for questionable fundraising practices through his office.

Handel is now all in with no fall back just as a few of her opponents were starting to push out stories that she was going to drop out and run for re-election instead. She is also, given all the stories lately about the taint within the GOP, setting up a higher ethical standard for the gubernatorial race.

Ballsy.

Her press release is below the fold.

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We previously endorsed Karen Handel at RedState. In fact, we did it at our RedState Gathering in Atlanta back in August.

Since then, the political landscape in Georgia has become tumultuous and as the dust settles, it is clear that Karen Handel is the front runner, though polling hasnt reflected it yet.

Here is what’s up and why:

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