Alleged liberals and the 8th Congressional District

Retired Air Force Major General Rick Goddard officially announced his candidacy in the 8th District yesterday. He'll run as a Republican against U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, who has fended off several attempts to knock him off the post despite committing the sin of being a Democrat in Georgia.

Most recently, Marshall defeated former Congressman Mac Collins, who repeatedly bashed the Democratic Party and generally made Marshall out to be too liberal for the district. It was a tight race (in fact I don't think Collins has conceded in the 7 months since the election), but Marshall pulled it out.

It will be interesting to see if Republicans go to the "Jim Marshall is too liberal and he likes Nancy Pelosi" well again in this race, since it didn't work last time.

Marshall has built a reputation as a moderate, and a pretty conservative one at that. He also dropped out of college to be an Army Ranger in Vietnam, so it's kind of hard to paint him as some kind of hippie.

Any way, keep an eye on the evolving Goddard / Republican Party strategy, but a couple of quotes nod in the "bash liberals" direction:

Said Goddard in May: "When I see the leadership in charge of Congress, the vision the liberal left has for the country is not the vision I have had for many years and it is not the vision that most men have fought and died for."

And yesterday: "Our nation was founded on Christian faith. It's the core of what we do. Our Constitution does not say we can't witness to our faith in public places. We must take our country back from the ACLU."