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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Orcastraiter who wrote (510267)	12/15/2003 2:14:06 PM
From: Mark Konrad	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Good for you, exercising your right to vote and to free speech. More evidence of a great nation--MK--

To: Orcastraiter who wrote (510267)	12/15/2003 2:27:46 PM
From: JakeStraw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Those Democrats seem to eat their own By PHILIP GAILEY, Times Editor of Editorials Published December 14, 2003 ------------------------------------------------------------ I think Democrats may need a distemper shot. The problem is not just their pathological loathing of President George W. Bush. The war in Iraq and the related ascendancy of Howard Dean have aroused the party's liberal base and created new tensions among Democrats. Personal and political relationships are turning icy. Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia is bad-mouthing his party's presidential candidates, and former President Jimmy Carter is bad-mouthing Miller for betraying Democrats. Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean for president left sore feelings among Dean's opponents, especially Joe Lieberman. After all, Lieberman was Gore's vice presidential running mate in 2000 and held off announcing his own presidential candidacy until Gore made up his mind on whether to run again. Gore didn't even have the decency to call Lieberman, who heard about the endorsement from reporters. No wonder he feels betrayed. Meanwhile, some Democrats suspect that Bill and Hillary Clinton have been conniving to make sure the party picks a loser next year - maybe retired Gen. Wesley Clark - so the way will be clear for Hillary to run for president in 2008. By endorsing Dean, one theory goes, Gore was stepping out of the Clintons' shadow once and for all. The Clintons and the Gores have parted ways, but neither couple has left the building. If Howard Dean had stayed out of the race, we probably would be seeing another boring conventional campaign. Dean, a Washington outsider, has made the lives of his opponents miserable. He opposed the war that Kerry, Lieberman, Edwards and Gephardt voted for and rode that issue to the front of the pack. He energized the grass roots and used the Internet to take the lead in fundraising. He has made Bush-bashing a sport, and he gets away with saying some really dumb or even reckless things. For example, Dean has been repeating what he calls the "crazy theory" that President Bush had advance warning of the 9/11 attacks from Saudi Arabia. Some of Dean's opponents didn't make much effort to disguise their dislike for the former Vermont governor even before Gore embraced him as the only candidate in the race who had the good sense to oppose the Iraq war from the start, a claim that infuriates John Kerry, the Vietnam war hero who charges that Dean has played both sides of that issue. It must cross Kerry's mind that while he was being shot at - and wounded - in Vietnam, Dean was enjoying the ski slopes of Colorado, having escaped the draft because of a bad back. Lieberman, meanwhile, has accused Gore of turning his back on everything Bill Clinton did to move his party to the political center. Dean may excite the party's liberal interest groups, but Lieberman thinks Dean is too far out in left field - in more ways than one - to defeat Bush. Kerry and Lieberman, steeped as they are in senatorial courtesy, are choosing their words carefully on the campaign trail, but you should hear what their aides and strategists are saying in private about Dean and Gore. If you think Gore is the most unpopular Democrat in the country at the moment, think again. That would be Zell Miller, who disses his party's leadership, votes with the president and recently announced plans to support Bush for re-election. And if that's not enough to outrage the party faithful, his new book, A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat, will send their blood pressure off the charts. In his book, Miller trashes his party's presidential candidates as pawns of liberal interest groups. "They are good, smart and able folks, but if I decide to follow any of them down their road, I'd have to keep my left turn signal blinking," the senator writes. Miller cites his fellow Georgian, Jimmy Carter, as an example of why Democrats keep losing the South. He writes that Carter lost his re-election bid "because after campaigning as a new kind of Democrat, he governed too much like an old one." Last week, Carter said in a radio interview that Miller has "betrayed all the basic principles that I thought he and I and others shared." He said the appointment of Miller to the Senate vacancy was "one of the worst mistakes" then-Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes made in his four years in office. Miller shrugged off Carter's criticism. Carter is a former president and a Nobel Peace Prize winner who believes he occupies the moral high ground. However, Miller remembers when Carter was just another Georgia politician playing the race card in the 1970 governor's race. Carter spoke in code to segregationists. Unlike his moderate opponent, Carl Sanders, Carter promised to invite Alabama Gov. George Wallace to address the Georgia Legislature. He also said he would name a prominent segregationist to a seat on the state university board of regents. During the campaign, one mysterious leaflet appeared in rural areas showing Sanders being doused with champagne by two black basketball players for Atlanta Hawks. Another pointed out that Sanders had attended the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Carter did not.) I've known Carter and Miller for four decades, and I don't understand why Carter pitched his gubernatorial campaign to segs or why Miller plans to vote for George Bush. I do know that both were progressive governors who did much good for their state. Despite their sharp political differences, there ought to be room for both of them in the Democratic Party. sptimes.com