The Atlanta Journal-Constitution opinion page..

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

A legislative session that for Republicans had all the makings of disaster turned suddenly last week — demonstrating once again why nobody should bet on elections that are more than a few days away.

A week ago Friday, rank-and-file House Republicans were in a deep funk about the fall elections.

Democrats in one afternoon lifted them out of it. Bloodbath averted. Obama surge neutralized.

I’d have to hogtie you to force you to sit still long enough to hear the full explanation of why Georgia House Democrats — minus seven — voted last week to deny tax relief to 93 percent of Georgians who own cars, trucks and motorcycles. But they did.

Some votes can be explained to neighbors who don’t pay much attention to the games politicians play in Atlanta and Washington. Some, including this one, can’t.

Rank-and-file Republicans were disturbed because House Speaker Glenn Richardson was still insisting he’d make them vote on a tax shift proposal — a new tax on groceries and services to generate money for property tax relief — that would have walked incumbents into a bloodbath in the primary and in the general election.

Gleeful Democrats were beside themselves at the prospect of running against Republicans who could be accused of supporting 175 new taxes. Had Richardson pushed that tax bill onto the floor, it would have been the end of his speakership.

But he didn’t.

He dropped the proposed tax on groceries and services His tax bill was morphed instead into a proposal by Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter of Alpharetta to end the “birthday tax,” the ad valorem tax that Georgians pay on their birthdays to renew their car tags. It would have saved owners of almost 7 million personal vehicles $637 million, the sum counties collected in 2007.

This is genuine tax relief. Not a swap. It is the real deal, getting Republicans back to what should have been their roots.

The proposed constitutional amendment on the floor Wednesday would also have frozen property assessments at 2008 levels and limited them to 2 percent per year for homes and 3 percent for other property.

Overall, property tax collections by local governments would be limited to new construction, plus the rate of inflation in government’s cost of goods and services. That rate would have averaged 5.05 percent over the past five years, Richardson said. The cap would not apply to revenues from other sources.

The proposed cap could have been raised by voters in a referendum. The ballot question would have to be phrased: “Shall property taxes be increased …?”

That cap was a primary reason Democrats gave for voting against a tax break for owners of 530,362 vehicles in Cobb, 586,995 in Gwinnett, 527,555 in Fulton and 436,997 in DeKalb.

Dumb. Seriously dumb. Pick any barber shop in Georgia. Walk in and explain that you didn’t oppose giving patrons a major tax break on their cars but voted against it because the proposed amendment would have limited the increase that cities and counties could impose on their homes. And, for good measure, throw in some gibberish about the state “owing” local school systems some back funding — and that’s why you voted against a tax break for almost every family in the state.

Good luck.

Four of the seven Democrats who broke ranks — Bobby Parham of Milledgeville, Alan Powell of Hartwell, Jay Shaw of Lakeland and Ellis Black of Valdosta — represent areas where Democrats have lost ground for most of the past decade. The other three were Bob Bryant of Garden City, Kevin Levitas of Atlanta and Amy Carter of Valdosta.

The proposed amendment lost 110-62, with 120 needed. One Republican, Tom Dickson of Cohutta, voted no.

Had it passed and been approved by voters in November, Georgians would have gotten $672 million in tax relief, the sum projected for the 2011 fiscal year. That’s money politicians would not have been tempted to spend.

Republicans were headed to an election-year disaster. And then came the Democrats.

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Hard to imagine that Democratic presidential politics could get any more bizarre, but party leaders are now suggesting a Florida re-vote with the primary being conducted by the U.S. Postal Service.

A mail-in primary is “actually a very good process,” said DNC Chairman Howard Dean on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Every voter gets a ballot in the mail. It’s comprehensive. You get to vote if you’re in Iraq or in a nursing home. It’s not a bad way to do this.”

The party is desperate, of course, to get out of the box it’s in. Hillary won Florida, and Michigan too for that matter, and has a legitimate claim to the 313 delegates. The national party withheld delegates because the two states elected to vote earlier than the national party wanted. Barack Obama chose not to have his name listed on the Michigan ballot. The choice there was either Hillary or uncommitted. Hillary won — but not by a landslide.

Who pays for a re-do, which would cost an estimated $6 million? The party, for sure, with money Dean says it needs for the fall campaign against John McCain. Republican Gov. Charlie Crist has made it plain that the state won’t bail out the Dems.

Michigan’s Democratic Sen. Carl Levin noted Sunday that “There’s some real problems” with a mail-in ballot. “Not just cost, but the security issue. How do you make sure that hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million or more ballots can be properly counted and that duplicate ballots can be avoided?”

Hanging chads, hanging mailman, here we come. Republicans really should not get too down about their prospects in November. Watching Democrats in Congress and in politics offers some reassurance that the party will over-play or misplay every advantage.