Cagle could have room to maneuver in the middle between the governor and the speaker on hotly contested issues.

Tom Crawford writes in Georgia Trend:

During his political career, Perdue has swung from being a moderately conservative Democrat to a Christian Right Republican and he'll want to do things that appeal to the party's evangelical base.

With Perdue and Richardson pushing the envelope to the right, that could leave some space toward the center for a politician like Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle. If he chooses to go in that direction, Cagle would have room to maneuver in the middle between the governor and the speaker on hotly contested issues. Of course, Cagle is very conservative and religious himself.

What you're going to have is a lot of people grabbing the ball and trying to run with it, and they're all going to be running wide right.

What we don't know at this time is how the average Georgian will feel about all this. Voters haven't expressed any unhappiness so far with the Republican leaders. The next two years should tell us just how far to the right they're willing to go.