Opinion: Sarah Palin jumps into Georgia Senate runoff to help Chambliss

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Despite their electoral thrashing Nov. 4 in Congress and the White House, the Republicans’ business of collecting owsies is well and thriving.

Yes, sure, seeing politicians of either party out campaigning for others in their party is a sign of loyalty and, in Hillary Clinton’s case all fall, of keeping her promise to campaign for whoever won the Democratic presidential nomination.

With little media attention,Mitt Romney assiduously worked the local Republican side of the autumn campaign, advocating for his party’s presidential ticket.

But he also, more importantly for the future, campaigned hard for more than two dozen GOP congressional candidates and distributed funds from his personal PAC.

Such hard, thankless work is also a sure sign that the campaigner is positioning him/herself to get payback help for his or her own possible future run someday.

Now, the news: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is traveling back down to Georgia next Monday to do four last-minute campaign rallies in one day to help incumbent GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss.

Chambliss is in an apparently close-fought runoff race there with Democrat Jim Martin and the balloting is the next day, Dec. 2. Big-name Democrats have jumped in to help the party reach for its 60-Senate-seat, filibuster-proof majority by knocking off yet another Republican incumbent.

Palin, who’s also been a successful party fundraiser, will do events for Chambliss from Augusta to Savannah to Perry and then Atlanta, probably just before the evening news on TV. What a coincidence in case any station wanted a live shot of the Republican celebrity!

While many media and Democrats relish making fun of Palin to each other, even weeks after she lost, the 44-year-old mother of five drew immense crowds of the curious and Republican faithful during the presidential campaign. Many broke into chants of ‘Sa-RAH! Sa-RAH!’ even during speeches by the main candidate, John McCain.

The McCain-Palin ticket captured Georgia Nov. 4 by around 200,000 votes. Our colleague Frank James has some more details on Palin’s Peach State appearances over at the Swamp.

So if Chambliss wins Tuesday, whom do you think he might support or at least not oppose come 2012?

-- Andrew Malcolm

Speaking of runoffs, cast your ballot for cellphone alerts on each new Ticket item by registering here for free.