Republican insurance commissioner candidate Maria Sheffield sent out an e-mail today pointing readers to Gainesville radio host Martha Zoller’s interview with one of her opponents, state Sen. Ralph Hudgens, R-Hull.

Hudgens, apparently believing the mic was dead during a commercial break, told thousands of listeners that the insurance commissioner “can’t do squat about health care.” The AJC’s Jim Galloway picked up on it.

"There are countless cases of career politicians who while parading as a conservative in public often get caught expressing their true feeling when they think the voters are not listening," Sheffield's campaign manager, Kathryn Ballou, wrote in the e-mail.

Oh, Paul Broun. Your folksy, colorful barnyard sayings never fail to amuse.

Broun appeared on Fox News recently (not sure what day, exactly) to call for repealing the newly-passed health care bill.

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun is live-blogging the health care summit on Thursday.

Team Broun announced the congressman “will hold a real-time interactive discussion” on his Facebook page from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Hear me now and understand me later. Tea partiers are a bunch of girly men!

Broun also took a swipe today at California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for saying the tea party movement will disappear because it can’t offer any solutions.

Says Broun, “I will crush my enemy, and see him driven before me, and hear the lamentations of the women.”

Not really. But he did say Schwarzenegger is out of touch.

On the eve of Senate Democrats finally passing health care reform, Georgia Republicans are calling for an investigation into the deal that made it happen.

States are required to match federal funding for Medicaid, the health-care program for the poor and disabled. The health care bill would make people who earn up to 133 percent of the (very low) federal poverty line, costing states millions of dollars (federal officials have pledged to make up the difference, although that’s not part of the current legislation).

Sen. Ben Nelson ripped open his Christmas card Saturday and found millions of dollars in Medicaid reimbursements for his home state of Nebraska. In Majority Leader Harry Reid's envelope was a 60th vote for health care reform.

But when Democratic leaders played Santa for Nelson, they also handed Republicans a gift-wrapped issue to use in the health care debate.

Sen. Johnny Isakson: “Isakson also criticized the lack of transparency as the legislation was drafted and the backroom deals that Democratic Leader Reid, D-Nev., made with certain Senate Democrats in order to secure their votes on his health care proposal.

Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss voted against supporting the troops before they voted for it.

Georgia’s two Republican senators issued a news release over the weekend about a $636 billion defense spending bill the Senate passed Friday night.

“(W)e have the best trained, most professional, most effective, and best led military in the world and they deserve our unfailing support,” Chambliss said. “That is why I voted in favor of this bill.”

“While I do not agree with everything in this bill, this funding is critical to ensuring that our men and women in uniform have the resources they need to protect our homeland and continue the fight for freedom around the world,” Isakson said.

A group called the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is running ads in Georgia’s 12th District targeting Rep. John Barrow, D-Savannah, for his vote against health care reform.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which claims 250,000 members, said in a news release it raised $20,000 online to run ads criticizing 10 of the 39 Blue Dog Democrats, including Barrow, who voted against the bill.

U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, a Republican candidate for governor, let it slip during a live chat this morning that he is a birther.

In response to a question from journalist Tom Crawford, Deal said, “I am joining several of my colleagues in the House in writing a letter to the President asking that he release a copy of his birth certificate so we can have an answer to this question.”

Deal also said during the chat states should be able to opt out of a proposed Medicaid expansion because he doesn’t believe the federal government will really foot the bill. Which reminded me of something Gov. Sonny Perdue and GOP gubernatorial candidate John Oxendine told me last week. (notebook dump alert!)

Chatting today with Maria Sheffield, one of the roughly 6,000 Republicans running for state insurance commissioner, she mentioned that the crowds at GOP events seem a bit smaller and more subdued these days after the frenzy of the TEA parties and the anti-Obamacare town halls.

“I think in a way people are just worn out,” she said.

Perhaps that’s why, when this Paul Broun press release hit my inbox later this afternoon, it seemed so lukewarm by Broun’s standards.

The congressman had this to say about the House health care bill Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced today:

I spoke to Rep. Paul Broun this morning about the OPTION Act, which stands for Offering Patients True and Individualized Options Now. But we’ll just call it BrounCare.

He readily conceded that the idea of replacing Medicare with cash vouchers is not going to happen, so let’s shift the focus to some of his other ideas. Namely, letting people buy insurance across state lines, allowing groups of people to form pools to get lower rates, expanding tax deductions for health care expenses and transparent pricing (doctors and insurance companies posting costs and reimbursements for services up front).