Former Governor To Obama - I'm Busy

Former Democrat Georgia governor, and now candidate for governor again, Roy Barnes apparently has better things to do when Barry O comes to Atlanta for his $10,000 a pop photo op.

Not even an Aug. 2 visit to Atlanta by President Barack Obama will bring Barnes back. “He’s going to be in Middle and South Georgia,” campaign manager Chris Carpenter said Saturday.

Barnes has bet his campaign on rural Georgia — the one that turned its back on him in 2002 for his removal of the Confederate battle emblem from its place on the state flag.

To be sure the furor over the flag did get folks passionate, but what really did Mr Barnes in was the teacher's union. He proposed all sorts of measures to hold teachers accountable and was for a merit pay system. This didn't sit well with the teachers and they either stayed away from the polls or voted for his opponent, our current governor and the first Republican governor of the state since Reconstruction.

Good ol Roy has the Democrat vote sewn up in the state but his problem is the Dems ain't exactly too enthused about turning out at the polls as witnessed by our recent primaries. Republicans turned out in almost a 3 to 1 margin. Garnering all the Democrat votes in the state won't get him elected, and the current attitude towards all things Democrat in this state are so toxic that he can't really count on turning too many Independent or Republican votes to his side.

The sad part is I like Roy, or used to anyway. We were neighbors, sort of. We lived in the same city for awhile and his brothers still run the local hardware store, but with this campaign season he has completely forgotten about those reforms he proposed as governor and is now groveling back to the teachers acceding to their every wish. Some people may not have been in Georgia when he was governor, some may have forgotten how his actions as governor now no longer reflect his campaign statements, but the vast majority of residents do. To borrow an expression from a license plate that used to be popular around these parts, "Forget, Hell No!"