Jim Wooten: If Republicans were dedicated to giving voters reason to throw them out of office, they succeeded in this year’s legislative session.

Jim Wooten in today's AJC writes:

GOP’s bizarre budget flop goes down in history

If Republicans were dedicated to giving voters reason to throw them out of office, they succeed marvelously in this year’s legislative session.

Even granting newcomers a learning curve, this session of the Georgia General Assembly will go down as one of the most bizarre in modern times. It was, to borrow a lobbyist’s phrase, “chaos in search of frenzy.” There were no winners — except, perhaps, Democrats who as the minority party are achieving something that has eluded them for the past decade or more. That remarkable achievement is either the imposed or the self-regulated silencing of the fringe rhetoric that made the Georgia party indistinguishable from its national leadership.

To their credit, they’ve largely kept their mouths shut when they should, appeared reasonable when necessary, and have generally avoided missteps.

So we have here two budgets, one the supplemental for the current year and another a $20.2 billion budget for next year that involves spending $1.6 billion more. Neither is austere. Neither, with the exception of a tax rebate, would represent any important distinction between this party and the last one in power. And even the property tax rebates, while symbolically important, come with new borrowings — meaning, of course, that cash out is replaced by debt.

Who won this year? Nobody, except perhaps the not-seen and not-heard Democrats.