The accidental congressman: the surprising success and strict constitutionalism of Georgia Rep. Paul Broun.

• Author: Weigel, David
• Position: Columns

PUNDITS, ACADEMICS, AND Republican activists in Georgia want to make this perfectly clear: Paul Broun is an accidental congressman.

"I was flabbergasted when he won the election," admits Jim Box, one of many eminences in the Georgia Republican Party who declined to endorse the 61-year-old house call doctor before his upset victory in a special election last July. Box runs the GOP in Clarke County, which surrounds Athens and includes the University of Georgia; it's the area that gave Broun his winning majority.

"All the long-term historical indicators," says Merle Black, "indicate that Broun should have lost" Black, an Emory University political scientist with a peerless knowledge of Southern politics, bets that Broun will serve one term and lose the next Republican primary. Box agrees.

It's easy to see why they're skeptical. Broun, a self-described "strict constitutionalist," believes that the income tax should be abolished, that civil liberties degraded since 9/11 should be restored, and that fetuses deserve American citizenship. He has been married four times; opponents grumble that he performs house calls because hospitals won't hire him. This isn't the usual background of somebody who gets elected in Georgia.

So how did Broun get to Congress? After Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.) died of cancer last February, 10 candidates--six Republicans, three Democrats, and one Libertarian--fought for his seat. The entire Republican establishment, from Norwood's widow to local party leaders, endorsed a venerable state senator named Jim whitehead. To them, Broun was a meandering fringe candidate who had squandered his good name (his father was a state senator from Athens) in three previous defeats: a 1990 House race, a 1992 House primary, and a 1996 Senate primary. In the last contest, he finished fourth, with only 3 percent of the vote.

Whitehead ran a front-runner's campaign, skipping debates and promising to continue Norwood's moderate conservative legacy. Broun ran the same campaign he always has, pledging to support bills only if they fit a quirky four-part test: They have to be moral (according to the Bible), constitutional (according to the version he keeps in his suit pocket), necessary (according to logic), and affordable (according to a balanced federal budget). Even after tapping into $200,000 of his own cash, Broun raised just half as much money as Whitehead did and finished a distant second in the first round of voting, 43.5 percent to 20.7...