Shipp: Ask almost any Georgian why they might favor Republicans.

Bill Shipp writes:

Ask almost any Georgian why they might favor Republicans. They're likely to say they lean toward the GOP because it is the "conservative" party. Oh? The national Republican administration has run up a record deficit, engaged in a costly and bloody foreign war and declined to enforce federal immigration laws. On the state level, Gov. Sonny Perdue is proposing record-high state borrowing and usurping local control of schools in a half-dozen important management areas. GOP officials are sponsoring creation of new local government entities in a state already overburdened with 159 counties and hundreds of revenue-starved municipalities.

To many old-timers, those Republican efforts smack of out-of-control liberalism.

Democrats have equally serious problems. Their last presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry, might have won the 2004 election - if he had been from this planet. He appeared so far out and so uncertain on important issues that he frightened many otherwise rational Democrats into voting for the re-election of President George W. Bush.

Though Democrats claim to be the party of "all the people," interested in health care and social uplift, the litmus test for serious national Democrats is whether they support abortion rights. For many independent voters, abortion rights are not even on their political monitors.

In some parts of Georgia, "Democrat" has become a code word for "black," thanks in part to the "max black" redistricting efforts of key African-American Democrats such as Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

As a result, many believe the Democratic Party has abandoned its historic "big tent" role and serves mainly minority interests.