Posted on 10/16/2003 3:10:15 PM PDT by UnklGene
Throwing the Book at Fellow Democrats
Senator Zell Miller of Georgia has written a new book about the Democratic Party he's belonged to for 50 years. It won't win him any invitations to party functions, and indeed may get him disinvited from a few.
The book, entitled "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat," takes few prisoners and is unsparing in its criticism. Here's his take on Howard Dean, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination: "Clever and glib, but deep this Vermont pond is not."
Democrats will claim the retiring Mr. Miller is a bitter, old man who has decided to throw bombs as he leaves elective office at the age of 71. But the Georgia Democrat has earned his standing to comment on how the party has changed and in his words "damaged its chances of winning by amputating whole sections of the country that don't agree with elite liberals."
Mr. Miller ran the Democratic Party in Georgia when Jimmy Carter was governor. He himself was elected governor in 1990, and two years later nominated his friend Bill Clinton for president at the Democratic convention in New York. In 1999, he heeded his party's pleas to come out of retirement and be appointed to the Senate seat vacated by the death of Republican Paul Coverdell.
Once he got to Washington he quickly discovered that most of his Senate colleagues were out of touch with the values of the folks he knew back home in Georgia. As he pungently puts it in his book, "Today our national Democratic leaders look south and say, 'I see one third of a nation and it can go to hell.' "
Senator Miller even goes after his party's leader in the Senate, Tom Daschle. He notes that Mr. Daschle's refusal to pass President Bush's request to create a Department of Homeland Security before the 2002 elections came back to haunt Mr. Miller's colleague, Senator Max Cleland, who was defeated largely on the issue. In fact, he blames Mr. Daschle directly for the Cleland defeat, saying the Minority Leader's actions made it possible to hang a "personal albatross of partisan wrangling on homeland security" around Senator Cleland's neck.
The book takes care to praise many Democrats, including several of the current presidential candidates. But he also compares his party's preening before special interest groups to "streetwalkers in skimpy halters and hot pants plying their age-old trade for the fat wallets of 'K Street.' "
Mr. Miller says he wrote his book because he "just couldn't help taking one more whack at trying to talk a little sense into the party I've been part of since birth." His fellow Democrats will no doubt wish he had resisted the temptation, but they'd improve their own long-term electoral prospects by taking some his criticism to heart
I want it. :)
"Then the wiley ZelYoda took his red light saber and hacked them all to pieces."
I have had no use for this guy since he bloviated about Bill Clinton's guilt, then voted not to convict.
Go to hell, Zell.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.