Zell Miller: Why the Democratic senator "loathes" Democrats.

[Tight_rope]

Zell Miller
Why the Democratic senator loathes Democrats.
By Michael Crowley
Posted Friday, Aug. 27, 2004, at 8:59 AM PT

A main theme of George Bush's re-election campaign is the notion that it's Democrats, and not Bush himself, who are responsible for the bitter partisanship in America today. Bush, after all, pledged in 2000 to be "a uniter, not a divider." So it's a little awkward for him that the United States is now about as united as an English soccer stadium. Republicans say their party occupies the mainstream, common-sense political center. The real problem, they argue, is that the Democratic Party has been driven left by monomaniacal special interest groups and the wild-eyed likes of Michael Moore, George Soros, and Whoopi Goldberg. Their favorite piece of evidence? Zell Miller.

Miller is a silver-haired Democratic senator from Georgia who has dedicated the twilight of his long career to excoriating his own party. The 72-year-old Miller has become such a heretic, in fact, that he will deliver the keynote address at next week's Republican convention in New York City. It's a strange twist of history, given that Miller delivered the keynote address on behalf of Bill Clinton in 1992 (also at Madison Square Garden, as it happens).

But the Miller of old is long gone. Nowadays Miller sounds like some kind of right-wing beat poet. Of Democratic values he says: "If this is a national party, sushi is our national dish. If this is a national party, surfboarding has become our national pastime." Of John Kerry: "You can't make a chicken swim, and you can't make John Kerry anything but an out-of-touch ultraliberal from Taxachussetts." National Democrats are "being cannibalized, eaten alive by the special-interest groups with their single-issue constituents who care about their own narrow agenda."
More----->http://slate.msn.com/id/2105700/#ContinueArticle

[physioex]

1. I don't know if he loathes the Democrats.....

I would say it's more about the money and the lime light. If he simply switched parties, the lime light would go away and he is just another unimportant Senator that Shrub would care less about....

[Norquist Nemesis]

2. Still wondering if the Donkey will

kick his ass out the door and hand him papers as he exits stage right.

[Hidebo]

3. he starts to show his true color so blatantly as to draw more attention.

that's all. No big deal.

[oasis]

4. ZIg Zag Zell can go straight to hell.

[Tight_rope]

5. kick

[ClintonTyree]

6. The cartoon above................

doesn't do Zell justice. He should be drawn with the opposite end of the Donkey facing him, because that is what he truly is.

[Eurobabe]

7. does this jerk still receive party funds?

dump Miller!

[The Ref]

12. No, he doesn't

Zell is not running for re-election. So no, he doesn't get party funds. But he hasn't given back the funds he took when people thought they were electing a Democrat.

[newyawker99]

14. Hi The Ref!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[booksenkatz]

8. We Southerners get pissed off

at those who paint us all with a wide brush that has been dipped in a can of "Ignorant Religionut Redneck." Likewise, I imagine that those from the northeast must surely get tired of being painted with the "Out-of-Touch Ultraliberal from Taxachusetts" brush. But the Repubs can't run on their record, so they need labels and catchphrases desperately. Sadly, it seems to work with label-happy Americans who want the Cliff Notes version of everything.:(

[Cat Atomic]

11. Oddly, broad smears of the northeasterners are acceptable.

Even Bush goes around making those smears on the campaign trail. It doesn't work in reverse, for some reason.

Can you imagine what woould happen if Kerry started saying Bush was a 'typical uneducated southerner' or something? Wouldn't get much mileage out of that crap.

They've got different constituencies. Republicans have always been more comfortable with insults and labels.

[skygazer]

21. Well, quite frankly they bother me

I'm from the Northeast and I know damn well that the majority of people in that area are NOT rich by a long shot. There are little enclaves but most of Connecticut, most of Massachusetts, most of Rhode Island and virtually all of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are made up of average, hardworking, middle to lower middle class people who suffer chronically with high unemployment and lousy paying jobs with no upward mobility. Just because there are a number of Ivy League colleges in the area doesn't mean that all the residents are products of those colleges.

I hate generalisations.

[sventvkg]

9. PHUQ HIM.

[no_hypocrisy]

10. Zell Miller: a self-hating democrat

[qanda]

13. Good point at the end of the story

The reason Zell Miller won't change parties is because once he does he will cease to get attention. He would become just another partisan hack-- so true!

[Old and In the Way]

15. He's a bitter old man who's time has come

and gone.......

[bleedingheart]

16. Boy how pathetic the repukes are for having a dem speak for them

what a bunch of morans...

[otohara]

17. Dem Key Note Was Not Televised on Networks

I hope the same stands for Miller

[legin]

18. One can't help making the observation

that when Medea Benjamin unfurled an anti-war bannar at the DNC convention she got escorted off the floor in handcuffs .

When Zell endorses bush* and speaks at the republican convention the silence from the Democratic leadership is one of those deafening ones.

[Francine Frensky]

19. Reality: Georgia has higher taxes than "Taxachussets"

Atrios did a piece on this when zig zag zell first came out with this cute little rhymey thing that is devoid of fact.

[Francine Frensky]

20. Is Zig Zag Zell the flip-flopper really what * wants to project?

I don't know, if I'm making it my top point calling the other guy a flip-flopper, why in the world I'd have as my keynote speaker a guy who is the ultimate flip-flopper.

He had a reputation in GA loooong ago as zig-zag Zell.