Today’s thought experiment: who wins in a race between a Republican with Sarah Palin’s endorsement and one who’s birther-friendly and dared the federal government to stop him from deporting illegal immigrants?
Today, Republicans in the Peach State go to the polls to make their choice in the GOP runoff. The race pits former Secretary of State Karen Handel (the aforementioned Mama Grizzly) against former Rep. Nathan Deal (the one who just wanted to get to the bottom of the whole Obama birth certificate thing.) Who will win is anybody’s guess — the latest polls show the race as an absolute dead heat. Yesterday’s Mason-Dixon poll showed Handel leading by five.
Indeed, the advantage likely goes to Handel, the woman who won the most votes in Georgia’s July primary and stumped with Palin just yesterday.
But Deal’s team tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution they’ve got a real shot at a come-from-behind win thanks to Deal’s “seven-stop tour aboard his campaign chairman’s single-prop Pilatus PC12.” (They’ve got their own national backer, too: Mike Huckabee endorsed Deal last week.)
Whomever wins today will face former Gov. Roy Barnes, who handily won the Democratic primary in July. Barnes has been fairly quiet during the Republican runoff race, but he’s said he’s ready to come out swinging once he has an official opponent. Polls show him running slightly behind either Republican challenger at the moment.
For now, Georgians can enjoy one more day of a Republican primary that’s seen battles over who has more gay friends (not in a good way) and, literally, the bandying about of the phrase “big boy pants.”
