The one person speaking at the Republican National Convention that may raise the ire of Democrats aside from President Bush is -- a Democrat.  The one person speaking at the Republican National Convention that may be the most conservative of them all aside from President Bush is -- a Democrat.    

I am, of course, referring to Zell Miller, the Democratic Senator from Georgia who is retiring from public office.  Over the past four years, few in the Senate have been more supportive of President Bush than Miller.  Indeed, one could argue that Bush could count on Miller’s support more reliably than from some of his GOP colleagues.  Whether it is the War on Terror or tax cuts, Miller has stood steadfast with President Bush.

Not surprisingly, there is little love lost between Zell Miller and the Democratic Party. They are happy that he is retiring from public life, even though it is very likely that Georgians will send Republican Johnny Isaakson to the Senate.

However, it is worth remembering that Miller was a keynote speaker at another political convention in New York.  In 1992, Miller sung the praises of Bill Clinton as a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention.  Miller and Clinton knew each other well as fellow Democratic Governors from Southern states.

So what happened?

To answer that question it would be best to look at Senator Miller’s book A National Party No More – The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat.  Released in 2003, Miller straightforwardly explains his support for Bush while insisting that he will remain a Democrat for life, even after taking his “own Party to the woodshed.”

While many Democrats view Miller with disdain, it would be an education for them to read the third chapter of the book titled, “Born a Democrat -- Married a Democrat.”  In explaining himself, he recalls his roots in the Appalachian Mountains:

Yet Miller learned bipartisanship from his mother growing up in Young Harris, Georgia.  Widowed only seventeen days after Miller was born, Miller’s mother built their house from stones in the Hiawassee River.  The house took many years to build and did not have a wood heater until Miller was in high school.  “To this day, warmth is a luxury to me that I don’t expect others to understand,” recalls Miller.

Because of his mother’s situation and her perseverance and self-reliance, she won the respect of her neighbors -- Democrat and Republican alike.  She would serve on the Young Harris City Council for more than a quarter century and was twice elected mayor, becoming one of the first women to serve in that capacity in Georgia.

Miller believes that the Democratic Party has ceased to be a national party because of its alienation from the South.  He believes a tell tale sign of this was Al Gore’s inability to win a single southern state in 2000, including his home state of Tennessee.   Gore, of course, was not the first Democrat to lose all the Southern states in a Presidential election.  George McGovern and Walter Mondale were shut out in the South in 1972 and 1984.  But then again, McGovern and Mondale were shut out everywhere.  Had Gore won his home state he would have been elected President.    Never mind about Florida.  Miller believes that Democrats on the national level are out of their element when it comes to the South:

Miller argues that there is a difference between disagreement and disdain.  He believes those politicians commit “political suicide” if they appear intolerant of people’s values.  This was certainly the case with Howard Dean when he spoke of Southerners with Confederate Flags and guns in their pick up trucks.  That was the start of the downward spiral that culminated into a primal scream in Iowa.

At the time of this book’s release, Dean was the frontrunner in the Democratic field.  Consequently, Miller had very little to say about John Kerry.  The only mention of Kerry in the book occurs when he comments on Kerry’s photo in Vogue magazine, where Kerry is wearing a blue wet suit with a surfboard under his arm.  Miller asks, “Are there more surfboards or shotguns in America?”    Miller says even less about fellow Southerner John Edwards.

But that may be to Miller’s credit.  After all, too many Democrats are good at telling people why they oppose something but not so good at telling people why they support something, if they support anything at all.   

While Miller has been a strong supporter of the Bush tax cuts, the “straw that broke the old camel’s back” took place in the run-up to the 2002 mid-term elections over the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security.  Democrats objected to President Bush’s authority to bypass the Byzantine procedures of the Civil Service to move government employees in times of national emergency.  Of course, all Presidents for the past 120 years have had such authority, and Miller took his party to task for making it an election issue.  At a press conference on September 19, 2002 Miller warned:

On November 5, 2002, the Joe Six Packs of this country re-elected a Republican House of Representatives, gave control of the Senate back to the Republicans and also gave Republicans a majority of the gubernatorial seats and a majority of the state legislatures.  Zell Miller didn’t take the Democratic Party to the woodshed.  The American people did.

Miller believes that the Democratic Party may be headed the way of the Whig Party of the 1850s.  I am not so sure about that.    One cannot deny that the country is strongly polarized.  The Democrats may not be strong in the South but they are a force in the Northeast, the West, as well as some key Southwestern and Midwestern states.  The Democrats are not going away anytime soon.

Nevertheless, the days of John F. Kennedy getting greater support in Georgia than in Massachusetts are long gone.  The Democratic Party of John Forbes Kerry is far removed from the Democratic Party of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  Kennedy did not hesitate to stand up to threats from the Soviet Union.  Kerry does not know whether to stand up or sit down.

Certainly, Zell Miller is not the only Democrat to support President Bush.  Indeed, there are Democrats from outside the South who support Bush.  They include former New York City Mayor Ed Koch; Randy Kelly, the current mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota and actor Ron Silver, who in 2000 was a strong supporter of Bill Bradley’s bid for the White House.  Koch, Kelly and Silver, unlike Miller, tend to disagree with Bush on most of his domestic policies.  However, like Miller, they have concluded that the government’s most important obligation is national security, and that the Democratic Party has not adequately addressed the matter, much less put forth a cohesive alternative.  They also believe that politics should end at the water’s edge.  Too many Democrats would toss President Bush into the creek without leaving themselves a paddle.

Yet I believe that there are more 9/11 liberals or Bush Democrats out there than many might suspect.  These are people who believe that there are some things more important than Democrat vs. Republican.  Like Zell Miller, they are Democrats and always will be.  Like Zell Miller, they are also Americans first and foremost as are their children.  In a tight Presidential race, they make the difference for both President Bush and the future of our country.

A National Party No More is available on Amazon.com.

Email Aaron Goldstein

Send this Article to a Friend