After Reconstruction, the Democratic Party ruled the South. In election after election, the Democratic presidential candidate could count on all the electoral votes of the old Confederacy.
And because southern legislatures (and, after the 17th Amendment, southern voters) kept reelecting the same Senators, they racked up seniority and ruled many -- sometimes most -- of the committees.
They used this power to block things like the federal anti-lynching bill and, for many years, any other civil rights legislation that might break down the oppression of blacks.
The Democratic Party in the South was grimly determined to keep blacks in their place.
But in the 1960s (and, in a few brave cases, even earlier), some southern Democrats began to break the solidarity of the solid racist South.
One of those Democrats of the New South was Jimmy Carter; another was Zell Miller. And while both of these men had blotches on their record, playing the race card (or hinting at it, at least) in an early campaign, in office their record in favor of equal treatment of blacks was perfect.
Jimmy Carter went on to be governor of Georgia, then President, and finally the most-admired ex-President of our time.
Zell Miller, after being Georgia's "lieutenant governor for life" (or so it seemed), ended his political career as a Democratic governor who balanced Georgia's budget while launching ambitious programs like universal prekindergarten education and college scholarships for every student with a B average.
Miller's credentials as a loyal Democrat are unassailable -- he delivered Georgia to Bill Clinton during the primaries in 1992 at a time when many doubted Clinton's ability to win.
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In his new book A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat, Zell Miller lays it on the line. He has seen how both parties are far too beholden to big-money special interests, but saving the Republican Party from itself isn't his agenda. What he cares about is the way the Democratic Party has thrown away its own conservative wing -- especially in the South, which has been treated with contempt by most Democratic candidates in recent years.
The book isn't just complaint about the current Democratic leadership's ineptitude and ignorance about the South. Senator Miller lays out, by example at least, a program for what a centrist Democratic Party might look like.
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The sad thing is that it will probably take an electoral debacle to sweep out most of the current Democratic Party leadership before any serious change can be made.
I hope for the sake of the country we get this this year.
Fortunately, the American electorate has a history of slapping down whichever party commits itself to extremism.
But how often before have the national media been so totally committed to advancing the cause of the most extremist wing of one of the parties? What will happen to America if a deceived electorate hands over its safety and its liberty to a party committed to ignoring both national security and the principle of majority rule?
I hope we don't have to find out.
By Orson Scott Card
www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-11-23-1.html |
