Sen. Miller: Democrats Headed for 'Train Wreck'
WASHINGTON - Terry McAuliffe? A "disaster." The Democrat presidential field? "Do not understand the South." President Bush? "A little Churchill in him."
America's most outspoken Democrat leader, retiring Sen. Zell Miller, does not hold back.
In an exclusive interview with NewsMax, the Georgian, who supports President Bush’s re-election, talked about everything from the White House wannabes to Sept. 11.
Democrat front-runner Howard Dean, Miller told NewsMax, “is not a knowledgeable source about how to run campaigns in the South.”
Campaigns in the South, he added, have been about “moving ahead” on “economic development” and “improving education.”
Fresh from the bruising he took for talking about Southerners in “pickup tucks with Confederate flags,” Dean is in hot water again for a stereotype of the South.
Miller says the former Vermont governor’s ignorance of this region of the country is reflected in Dean’s remark that “we’ve got to stop having campaigns in the South based on race, guns, God and gays.”
To Miller, Dean has once again “come up with some of the same old caricature and stereotypes of the South,” but Dean is not alone. All nine of the major Democrat candidates “do not understand, really, the South.”
“We’re for tax cutters,” the senator and former governor said. “We’re strongly patriotic. We want to hold our own and not run with our shirt-tails at half-mast out of Iraq.” Either we fight the battle there, or we fight it “on the streets of America one of these days.”
In his best-selling book, “A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat,” Miller says of Dean: “Clever and glib. But deep this Vermont pond is not.”
Sen. Edwards: Ruined by Pressure Groups
Miller views fellow Southerner John Edwards, D-N.C., as one who “showed great promise” until his ambition to become president led him to allow himself “to be completely captured by the very narrow special-interest groups” that have pulled national Democrats so far left as to be “out of the mainstream.”
The senator also acknowledges to NewsMax that he has “moved more than a few inches to the right” since 1992, when he told the Democratic National Convention that the Reagan-Bush era represented “12 dark years” that “dealt in cynicism and skepticism.”
Not only did he get to know and like the current President Bush when the two served as governors, says Miller, but he ultimately became disappointed in Bill Clinton’s eight-year tenure in the White House.
Moreover, 9/11 “changed this world forever,” and the current commander-in-chief has shown that he has “a little Churchill in him.”
Further, the senator says the Bush administration fits his own “conservative Democrat” instinct for tax cuts. He was instrumental in helping to pass Bush's tax relief on Capitol Hill.
Though he has entertained the Clintons in the governor’s mansion, Miller believes that positions Hillary Clinton has taken on the issues since 1992 “would weaken her in the South” if she were to jump into the presidential race. “I think she would have a very hard time carrying any Southern state.”
“It’s obvious that a train wreck is about to happen with the Democratic Party,” Miller believes.
From Obstructionism to Treason
Furthermore, he sees Republican gubernatorial victories in Mississippi and Kentucky this week as confirmation of his predictions that Demcorat filibusters in the Senate against President Bush’s well-qualified judicial nominees, including some from the South, would have “a very, very negative effect on the Democrats” in that regioin.”
Miller also thinks that “someone ought to pay a price” for the Democrat memo from the Senate Intelligence Committee outlining a plan to use intelligence information as a partisan weapon to destroy the commander-in-chief in time of war. He has called this “a first cousin” to treason.
Have any of his Democrat colleagues taken the Georgian to task for that? “No, they don’t. They kind of leave me alone.”
Miller says Democrats respect his independence and Republicans understand that though he votes with them “many, many times,” he remains “a Southern Georgia Democrat.” At 71, the senator plans no future race as either a Democrat or a Republican after he retires at the end of next year.
Here are the senator’s descriptions of some of his fellow Democrats:
# Party boss Terry McAuliffe: “A total disaster as chairman.”
# House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: Never met her, but she’s “just a San Francisco liberal.”
# Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle: “A good man who’s been cordial to me, but I can never forget his having the Democrats in the Senate vote 11 times against the Homeland Security bill because the federal employees didn’t get what they wanted.” To Miller, that was “the straw that broke this camel’s back.”
# Far-left former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, a fellow Georgian notorious for her conspiracy theories about Bush and 9/11: (Laughing) “Loony.”
Miller says President Bush “will not have to ask” for his help in the campaign. For starters, he believes if the president comes to Georgia, he will stand ready to campaign with him.
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