"A National Party No More"

U.S. Senator Zell Miller (D-Georgia) is out with a new book: A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat. Some of it has appeared in a three-part series in The Washington Times this week. He also had an op-ed at OpinionJournal.

From Part 1, Monday, Nov. 3:

.... The South that Democratic Party leaders have stuck in their minds is gone with the wind.

Democrats in Washington also believe in purity. Like that old Ivory Soap commercial, 99.44 percent pure is all that will do. You cannot agree on just seven of their 10 issues, or even nine. All 10 must be embraced and ostentatiously hugged to your bosom with slobbering kisses.

Remember how Democrats wouldn't even let Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey speak at their national convention because he was pro-life? That was keeping the convention "pure."

Democratic leaders are as nervous as a long-tailed cat around a rocking chair when they travel south or get out in rural America. They have no idea what to say or how to act. I once saw one try to eat a boiled shrimp without peeling it. Another one loudly gagged on the salty taste of country ham.

Democrats have never seen a snail darter they didn't want to protect, but sometimes I think the one endangered species they don't want to save is the Southern conservative Democrat.

We're like the alcoholic uncle that families try to hide in a room up in the attic: After the primaries are over and the general election nears, national Democrats trot out the South and show us off — at arm's length — as if to say, "Look how tolerant we are; see how caring? Why, we even allow people 'like this' in our party of the big tent. We still love that strange old reprobate uncle."

As soon as the election is over, the old boy is banished to the attic and ignored for another two years.

Al Gore became only the third Democrat since the Civil War to lose every state in the old Confederacy, plus two border states. George McGovern and Walter Mondale were the others. But they had an excuse: They were crushed in national landslides.

Gore's loss was different. Had he won any state in the old Confederacy or one more border state, he would be president today. Gore lost his home state of Tennessee, Clinton's home state of Arkansas and the Democratic bastion of West Virginia. Even Michael Dukakis — hardly a son of the South — didn't manage to lose there.

The campaign in the South was a mess, and it didn't have to happen. The region had more Democratic governors than Republican governors, and the Democrats held a majority of state legislative chambers. Largely because of the debacle, three Democratic governors also bit the dust in 2002.

In 2004, if we have the same popular-vote split between the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, and if these candidates win the same states, the Electoral College margin for the Republican will be bigger. How much bigger? The Republican would have a majority not by four electors, as George W. Bush did in 2000, but by 18....

From Part 2, Tuesday, Nov. 4:

.... My fellow Senate Democrats are decent, hardworking and smart. They have been friendly and more than fair to me since I arrived in July 2000, even with my rough edges and strong opinions. Let that be underlined: They have been much nicer to me than I have either deserved or expected.

But let this also be clear: I will not be bland in what I write, for I am not blind to what I see. What I saw gradually drew back the curtain on Washington's political stage, and over time my awe turned to shock.

I began to refer to the Tuesday luncheon meetings of the Senate's Democratic caucus as the "Tums-days" lunches, because the ideology moved further and further to the left and the oratory was turned up to a decibel level that got so shrill for my old ears that I needed Tylenol to go along with my antacid.

"The Groups" and money. Money and "the Groups." It was like a bad song you can't get out of your mind. Once we were urged over and over to attend a fund-raising breakfast because a big labor union was going to give the party $20,000 for every senator in attendance. All 50 of us answering "present" could mean a million dollars. Of course, I attended.

But I began to think that the Democratic caucus sees the entire nation through the partisan prism of liberal states like California, New York, Maryland and Massachusetts, and believes that what is good Democratic politics there just has to be good Democratic politics from sea to shining sea.

I naturally see the nation through the conservative prism of Georgia and the South, but I would never suggest that what was good Democratic politics in my neck of the woods would play well in Malibu and Manhattan.

When "the Groups" say "frog," each party jumps. It really doesn't seem to matter how it affects the people or the nation as a whole. My yardstick says the Democrats clearly win the vertical leap when "frog" is yelled by NARAL Pro-Choice America or by AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) with their 7.4 million members.

If you are organized and have an acronym, an address inside the Beltway and a PAC, you are in like Flynn. Just name your wish, and one of the caucuses will bust a gut to romance you.

If you are only an individual with some rural route address, then forget it, Bubba. The politicians won't even blow you a kiss, much less romance you....

From Part 3, Wednesday, Nov. 5:

.... I fear that some of the Democratic presidential candidates are treading on very dangerous ground for the party and, more importantly, for the country.

I do not question their patriotism; I question their judgment. They are doing what politicians often do, playing to the loudest, most active and most emotional group of supporters, feeding off frustration while clawing to find some advantage. I've done it myself and lived to regret it. My concern is that, without meaning to, they are exacerbating the difficulties of a nation at war.

Some of the liberal media excuse these actions by calling them "populism." Populism, my butt. It's demagogy, pure and simple. They should stop this, or at least modify it into a more civil discourse.

Howard Dean, while not alone, is the worst offender, and it says a lot about the current Democratic base that he has emerged as front-runner for the nomination. Angry and red-faced, these doom-and-gloomers need to take some "calm-me-down" pills. They should realize their overheated rhetoric is dividing the country when they should be helping unite it.

Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie didn't stoop to this demagogy in 1940 when he ran against President Roosevelt during those dangerous times on the eve of World War II. And Neville Chamberlain didn't do it to Winston Churchill, who had replaced him as British prime minister. They understood there are some things more important than making political points when a nation is in peril.

Frankly, I cannot understand the candidates' shrill, manufactured opposition. We've freed a nation from a cruel and oppressive dictator. A free Iraq, most everyone agrees, can transform the Middle East.

Isn't that what presidents have wanted to do for many years? Give it time. Of course, it's going to be difficult. Of course, it's going to be costly. Regrettably, more of our American sons and daughters will die.

There will be times when it looks like it's not worth it. But in the long stretch of history, it will be worth it.

Allow me to point out, Faithful Reader, that both Kentucky and Mississippi voted into office their Republican candidates for governor in yesterday's election, ousting Democrats from each gubernatorial mansion.

Now, from OpinionJournal, Nov. 3:

If I live and breathe, and if — as Hank Williams used to say — the creek don't rise, in 2004 this Democrat will do something I didn't do in 2000, I will vote for George W. Bush for president.

I have come to believe that George Bush is the right man in the right place at the right time. And that's a pretty big mouthful coming from a lifelong Democrat who first voted for Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and has voted for every Democratic presidential candidate the 12 cycles since then. My political history to the contrary, this was the easiest decision I think I've ever made in deciding who to support. For I believe the next five years will determine the kind of world my four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren will live in. I simply cannot entrust that crucial decision to any one of the current group of Democratic presidential candidates.

Why George Bush? First, the personal; then, the political.

I first got to know George Bush when we served as governors together, and I just plain like the man, a man who feeds his dogs first thing every morning, has Larry Gatlin sing in the White House, and knows what is meant by the term "hitting behind the runner."

I am moved by the reverence and tenderness he shows the first lady and the unabashed love he has for his parents and his daughters.

I admire this man of faith who has lived that line in that old hymn, "Amazing Grace," "Was blind, but now I see." I like the fact that he's the same on Saturday night as he is on Sunday morning. And I like a man who shows respect for others by starting meetings on time.

That's the personal. Now, the political.

This is a president who understands the price of freedom. He understands that leaders throughout history often have had to choose between good and evil, tyranny and freedom. And the choice they make can reverberate for generations to come. This is a president who has some Churchill in him and who does not flinch when the going gets tough. This is a president who can make a decision and does not suffer from "paralysis analysis." This is a president who can look America in the eye and say on Iraq, "We're not leaving." And you know he means it.

This is also a president who understands that tax cuts are not just something that all taxpayers deserve, but also the best way to curb government spending. It is the best kind of tax reform. If the money never reaches the table, Congress can't gobble it up....

See also my own ruminations on the future of the Democratic Party.

P.S. Jonathan Karl writes at OpinionJournal, yesterday, about A Democrat Who Dissents:

.... His journey from party loyalist to party apostate began shortly after Al Gore became the first Democratic presidential candidate since Walter Mondale to lose every state in the South (even Michael Dukakis managed to win West Virginia). Mr. Miller had just come to Washington to replace Republican Sen. Paul Coverdell, who died in 2000, and was convinced that Mr. Gore lost because he alienated conservative Southerners on issues ranging from taxes to gun control and abortion. As Mr. Miller reached out to the new president — "I'm with you on a lot of things," he told President-elect Bush — he was mystified by Democratic opposition to Bush nominees John Ashcroft for attorney general and Ted Olson for solicitor general. Mr. Olson was approved by a vote of 51-47; Mr. Miller was one of only two Democrats to vote "yes."

At first, Mr. Miller was impressed with Tom Daschle, but his relationship with the entire Democratic leadership changed in the months before the 2002 midterm elections, during the debate over the Department of Homeland Security. Virtually everyone in Congress was in favor of the new department, but the bill creating it was tied up for months as the Democrats insisted that its employees have the same civil-service protections as other federal employees, a top demand of the labor unions. Mr. Miller could not believe that his party would hold up homeland security to please an interest group. Like the Republicans, he believed the president wanted the flexibility to hire, fire and reassign workers.

"Have we lost our minds?" Mr. Miller asked fellow Democrats in a speech five weeks before the election, as the homeland-security bill languished. Failure to give the president flexibility, he said, "will haunt the Democratic Party worse than Marley's ghost haunted Ebenezer Scrooge." At a press conference, he brought his finger across his neck and said, "We're slitting our own throats." His warnings were unheeded, and, as he predicted, Republicans played the issue up in the final weeks of the campaign. Democratic incumbents lost in Missouri and Georgia, and the party lost control of the Senate....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 11/05/03 07:03:47 AM
Categorized as Political.