Posted on 11/18/2003 9:23:29 PM PST by nickcarraway
LOS ANGELES -- There's a lesson happening south of the border that should make some Canadian politicians realize at times, principles matter more than blind party loyalty.
It's in the move by one of the most-respected Democratic politicians in the U.S., Zell Miller, to chastise his own party and throw his support behind George W. Bush and the Republicans in next year's presidential elections.
Miller is using Democratic icons such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy to explain why his party has gone astray and why the Bush team is on the right track.
The 71-year-old senator from Georgia has penned a book
A National Party No More:
The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat. (Stroud and Hall, $26 US)
If that title reminds you of arch-conservative Barry Goldwater's landmark work, Conscience of a Conservative, you'll realize how the former two-time Georgia governor, who credits much of his success in life to his vigorous stint in the U.S. Marine Corps, has gone after his own party as if jumping from a landing craft with a blazing automatic in hand.
To gauge how much Miller's move has shaken the Democratic hierarchy, Miller ended his two terms as Georgia's governor with an 85% approval rating. In 1998, the Washington Post -- a bastion of liberalism -- named him Governor of the Year, and he won his Senate seat with an astonishing 58% of the vote, even though he was in a seven-person race.
It's safe no say no Canadian politician has been as hailed as Miller. Certainly, it's hard to imagine the defection of any high-ranking Canadian politician to the other side that would cause a similar earthquake.
Perhaps the closest equivalent would be when Preston Manning created the Reform party and almost overnight devastated the federal Progressive Conservatives and then made Reform the official Opposition party in the Commons.
That's what happens when a party hierarchy loses touch with voters, as Miller attests the Democrats have.
Just weeks ago, the Democrats were confidently expecting they could take Bush and his Republican administration out of office come next year's elections. Iraq seemed a quagmire and the economy uncertain. Yet now, the economy is rolling along -- a 7% increase in the third quarter -- and none of the Democrat presidential hopefuls has caught fire heading into the primaries.
In a scathing attack on today's Democrats, Miller, who often voted with the Republicans on any number of issues -- which would be pretty much akin to one of Jean Chretien's cabinet ministers voting on a regular basis for Canadian Alliance motions -- said "once upon a time, the most successful Democratic leader of all, FDR, looked south and said, 'I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-nourished'. Today our national Democratic leaders look south and say 'I see one-third of a nation and it can go to hell.' "
As for Democrats who criticize Bush's huge across-the-board tax cuts and his insistence on building America's military strength to bring security to the world, Miller notes tax cuts and a strong military were two of JFK's main planks.
Miller suggests the way the Democrats and their presidential hopefuls are going portends the same kind of electoral debacles suffered by George McGovern in 1972 when Richard Nixon wiped the floor with him, and that of Walter Mondale in 1984 when Ronald Reagan swiftly made mincemeat of him. Both McGovern and Mondale held strong left-of-centre stances, but seemed oblivious to the actual moods of middle America. The huge ballot box successes of Nixon and Reagan reflected the men and women McGovern and Mondale rejected, even scorned.
Surely, Miller's independent voting record -- without bitter repudiation from his own Democratic colleagues -- and now his total abandonment of his party at such a crucial time -- demonstrates yet again the superiority of the American political system compared to our own entrenched model.
Theirs is one of flexibility, ours of rigidity.
There a senator or congressman can freely vote his or her own conscience, where here, as demonstrated by the totalitarian nature of the Liberal hierarchy, it would mean immediate rejection from the party.
Our own system needs a major overhaul so our politicians actually represent the people rather than vested interests of the parties themselves.
Miller's book should make enthralling Christmas reading not only for U.S. political aficionados, but Canadians, too.
Has a nice ring to it, dontcha' think?
The organization that administers the tract of land north of the lower fourty-eight.
(steely)
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