The Senate, Snowe and Dinkytown

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

This week Senator Saxby Chambliss won a runoff vote in Georgia. It’s possible you missed this. Perhaps you were busy — oh, I don’t know, maybe contemplating the unemployment rate or learning to darn holes in old socks or embarking on a promising new career in the booming field of squirrel hunting.

Anyhow, the Georgia runoff was more important than you might imagine. Certainly more significant than anything Chambliss has done since he skipped a closed-door Senate session on Iraq intelligence data to go golfing with Tiger Woods. His victory means that the Republicans will have at least 41 seats in the Senate when Barack Obama becomes president. (This is actually going to happen eventually. I promise.)

Since it takes 60 senators to force a vote on a bill, if the Republicans stick together they can stop things from happening. Maintaining the capacity to bring things to a screeching halt is important for any party, so all the gang went down to Georgia to rally the troops. Mitt! Mike! McCain! Together again, just like in the primaries, with a stuffed manatee playing the part of Fred Thompson. “If we give them a blank check, they will sign that check and be taking money out of our pockets,” warned Rudy Giuliani, whose total failure as a presidential candidate clearly has not affected his ability to turn a phrase.

And the troops heard their call. One woman at a Sarah Palin rally told The Times’s Robbie Brown that she was terrified that Obama was “going to push a socialist agenda” but that she was sure “Saxby Chambliss can stop him.”

(More here.)