SANDY SPRINGS, Ga. – I met an honest-to-goodness Barack Obama voter. Nothing could have prepared me. Jack Cohen, a retired engineer, showed up at the polls to cast a ballot for the president. It was a close-run thing. “I almost voted for Ron Paul,” he said. “I wanted to vote for the candidate that would lose to Obama. It could have been Newt, but the polls say Newt’s got it anyway.”
Much more typical of the crowds here was Donna Vinson-Davis, a retired Senate staff who’d met Gingrich in her days on the hill. “It was never even a close call,” she said. “My second choice might have been Romney, but he hasn’t worked in Washington. We need someone who can jump in there and start fixing things.”
The difference between Georgia and every other primary state I’ve been to: The Ron Paul voter. He’s invisible. There is no cluster of Paulians haunting the crowd outside another candidate’s event. There are no hand-stenciled Paul signs on freeways. This was true in Tennessee, too.
