Talk Elections

Democrats' Miller will hustle for GOP's Bush

By JIM GALLOWAY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 
U.S. Sen. Zell Miller, Georgia's rebellious Democrat, said Tuesday he will campaign at President Bush's side throughout the year.

Miller's first task in trying to seal the Republican president's re-election grip on his crucial Southern base will be to introduce Bush at a $2,000-a-head fund-raiser Thursday in Atlanta.

The lame-duck senator is to be accompanied by "other Georgia Democrats" who also will endorse the president, according to the Bush-Cheney campaign. But Bush officials would not identify the other Democrats.

Miller first endorsed the president for re-election in October. High-ranking Republicans said discussions about an active campaign role for the former Georgia governor proceeded from there.

"I think it was more or less understood. I'm not very much of an inactive person," Miller said Tuesday in a telephone interview. "I have said and strongly believe that the next five years will be crucial for the America my children and grandchildren will inherit. I want a commander in chief like George Bush. I want a man who doesn't suffer from analysis paralysis."

Miller, who in his first term as governor gave the keynote address at the 1992 Democratic National Convention that nominated Bill Clinton for president, said he doesn't know where or how he will be used by the Bush campaign. He would not rule out appearances in television ads generated from the $131 million already raised for the president's re-election effort.

"We are grateful for Zell Miller's support and look forward to campaigning with him over the next 10 months," Bush campaign spokesman Reed Dickens said. Miller also would act as "a top surrogate for the president," Dickens said.

State Democrats were somber, if not sullen, at the development.

"It's disappointing, but it's old news," said state Rep. Calvin Smyre (D-Columbus), who is stepping down as Georgia party chairman.

Bobby Kahn, a long-time ranking Democrat and a candidate to replace Smyre, said: "Senator Miller spent four decades building the Democratic Party in Georgia. He's undoing all of that in the twilight of his career, and it's a sad thing to watch."

Bush polls strongly in the South, but Miller's assistance could be crucial in Florida, for example, which still is considered competitive. One top Republican said Miller could become an important figure in such states as New Mexico and Arizona and in parts of the Midwest.

"This is a huge help for President Bush," said Merle Black, an Emory University political scientist who has studied the rise of Republicans in the South. "It's very interesting that [Miller] is even doing this."

Less than two years ago, Miller cut TV ads for a host of Democratic candidates in Georgia, including Gov. Roy Barnes, who was ousted in the 2002 election by Republican Sonny Perdue.

Black said Miller registers very well with the 10 percent of conservatives who identify themselves as Democrat and that he could be the one to lead them into the Republican fold -- although the senator himself refuses to switch parties.

Miller will introduce Bush in the same Georgia World Congress Center ballroom where on Monday evening he heaped praise upon the president in front of 1,500 members of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. The senator had just returned from a week-long tour of Iraq.

Each person attending the Atlanta dinner received a copy of Miller's new book, a scathing critique of his fellow Democrats titled "A National Party No More."

In his speech, Miller compared Bush to legendary British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and condemned "Hollywood weenies" who opposed the war against Saddam Hussein.

"Sometimes, a short war must be fought to prevent a longer war," Miller, a former Marine, said. "Sometimes, the long view of history must be taken."

http://www.uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?board=5;action=display;threadid=14

Yes but new news in that Zell will campaign for him not just have his endorsement.

Hm...it seems party switches comes naturally to Georgians! (GWBFan, anyone?) :)

Sorry GWBFan, the tempation on this one was simply too much!:) :) ;D ;)

Now  Be Nice.

Georgia is equalled only by PA for habitual vote spliting, unpredictible changes in opinion and general bloody minded voting.

Not that this is a bad thing; an independent streak is always nice to see in the U.S

Don't worry, it's a joke between me and GWBFan, I checked it with him before, and I don't think he minds. It was just a little too obvious to resist... :)

lol  Quite alright.

But.

Zell hasn't switched parties.  He's still a Democrat, just planning on voting Republican in at least one office this election year - which doesn't at all qualify as a party switch.  Just to clarify.  lol

It was further announced today that int he coming day 9 more prominent GA Democrats plan to endorse President Bush and help his campaign.  Included among them are Frmr Carter AG Griffin Bell and a state senator.

Call me a cynic, but I think Zell Miller simply wants to avoid Max Cleland's fate by sweet-talking Republicans in GA (careerism, in other words).

Zell isn't running again so that wouldn't be the case.  The more likely cynical option would be that he is promoting his new book :)

explain?  Zell is a 2 term gov and won election to senate ina landslide.  He is very popular and not running for reelection.  

Cleland strayed off towards the liberal side and got toasted for it.

ok you know I want a Bush decal on my board, tell me how please!

Not the case.  Zell Miller is the single most popular Georgia politician.  Georgians, Republican and Democrat alike, love the guy and always have.  He could have come out totally against Bush and Georgians, for the most part, would still love him (I even would, just for the good he's done for this state).  With Cleland, he was only loved and respected by half of the state - the half that is Democratic.  Miller is loved by everyone.

The fact that Miller, a Democrat, is endorsing Bush, a Republican, is HUGE in Georgia - maybe even huge in the entire South.  It will influence those old southern Democrats who think the Democrats of today - Clinton's day - are still the Democrats of FDR's day - which they clearly are not.

Go to your profile and the signature area

Put img inbetween brackets.

Copy this url http://www.georgewbush.com/images/downloads/GWB_logo_100.gif

Then put /img inbetween brackets

My Howard Dean logo started this all. LOL... All Dean supporters!  Put the logo in you signature!

Miami=trendsetter!

Ok I'm doing something wrong yet, but what??

I must admit I did put it in mine after seeing Miami's :)  But I did think of it earlier but thought it might be tacky, but now I don't want my President to be left out!

you need to replace that first slash after img with a ], and put in a [ before the traling /img

Oh yeah!!!!  Vote Bush!

Thanks Buddy!

do you know how to do it for john kerry

I'd go to the kerry website and find a picture.  Then the key is the IMG and [  ], do it like explained above

i think im an idiot i cant do it
show one show me lol the website is:

http://www.johnkerry.com/images/thumbnails/buddyicon.gif

Okay right click the picture copy and paste the URL and put it in between () in your signature.

Ok I'll look

opens the kerry website slowly... unknown territory LOL

Kerry's head is too big so please no pictures of him.

I'm sorry but that is funny... LOL!

Lol... :)

lol it wont let me what is the url i need to paste into my signuarture if u do it from this:
 http://www.johnkerry.com/images/thumbnails/buddyicon.gif  
 
 
 
 
 

yes follow wild's instructions.

i did can u show me though from the url i put in my last post

Wait D'oh! that is the url just put that in your signature in between ()

?

Okay

1.go to profile
2.then go to the signature text box
3.then type ()

what u said got xed out

Yeah sorry it said then simply put that url in between ()

wow i cant do this can u just type out what im suppose to put in

being an idiot made me a full member

Hahahahaha, lol! Well, that's life for you... :) :D

no comment! :) :) :)

Okay lets try this

[img] http://www.johnkerry.com/images/thumbnails/buddyicon.gif [/img

copy and paste that into your signature and add a ] at the end

didnt work, damn let to try to find another pictrure to do it to thanks to everyone anyway

I though I would post because it seems that a local perspective and analysis might be more accurate.

Those other GA Democrats who have endorsed Bush are by no means "prominent."

From an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article today:
-----
Along with Miller, 11 state House Democrats were on hand to endorse the Republican president. They were introduced by Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue, a former Democrat, who called them "folks who used to be like I was."
Several of the legislators are chairmen of powerful House committees. "Of the people running now, I'm going with the president," Rep. Bobby Parham (D-Milledgeville) said of the current presidential candidates.
Rep. Carl Rogers (D-Gainesville) said, "I got a son in the military, too, and I have to support him." Rep. Mike Boggs (D-Waycross), who is serving his last year in the House and is running for a Superior Court judgeship next year, said: "There's a lot of conservative Democrats in the Georgia Legislature who support President Bush. I don't think it's controversial at all."
Other Democratic House members backing Bush are Reps. Ken Birdsong of Gordon, Robert Ray of Fort Valley, Johnny Floyd of Cordele, Jeanette Jamison of Toccoa, Mickey Channell of Greensboro, Penny Houston of Nashville, Mike Snow of Chickamauga and Charles Jenkins of Blairsville.
The legislators were joined by other Georgia political figures, including Griffin Bell, who was U.S. attorney general in President Carter's administration. "I support President George W. Bush for re-election because his leadership is crucial during this time in our nation," Bell said."
-----
None of these other legislators will have any impact whatsoever on the presidential election.  They are virtually unknown outside of their own districts, and, really, their endorsements mean absolutely to the rest of Georgia.

Georgia will obviously go for Bush anyway.  I see this turn of events as having no significant impact.

Well, here's one Georgian who ABSOLUTELY CANNOT STAND Zell Miller.  He is truly a reactionary conservative and a Republican; I don't understand why he maintains his titular link to the Democrats.  I despise Miller's hypocrisy, his public criticism of a party he himself supposedly belongs to.  Miller goes beyond exposing the supposed "flaws" he sees in his political enemies; he attempts to portray them as a party against "the people," one that hates everything "the people" stand for.  I find it revolting.

His crass expressions such as "like a hog on Sunday," which he substitutes for meaningful explanations of his opinions, to me convey a complete lack of professionalism and tact.

I would much rather have a politician be what he claims to be, even if I disagree completely, than one who criticises the establishment that gave him his opportunity to lead a lengthy political career and calls his opponents "liberal," villifying the word and showing how ineffective he truly is at leading "the people" he claims to understand so intimately.

http://atlblogs.com/republicansfordean/

There is some republicans who support Dean. Nothing beside Zell Miller and others of course.

Is there some chance that Republican senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhone Island would support Democrat candidate? I have understood that he was/is agaist Iraq War? Am I wrong? Pretty moderate or even liberal guy that senator Chafee. I like him.

()
Nice logo.

MY EYES!!!!! LOL

I don't like those Bush-Cheney logos either.

As I suspected, all of this logo business would quickly get out of hand... should we start some sort of pact on this - nothing bigger than x by x

Mine aren't all that big.

Miamiu what I said was a joke thats all

And if you were joking too sorry its hard to detect over the internet

Sarcasm doesn't travel weel through keyboards :)

Indeed.

my kerry one is the smallest one i can find

Considering all the trouble you went through, I think we should make a special exception in your case... :)

This one is cool:

()

This one is a little strange looking, but it does the trick:

()

thanks... i tryed both of us... lol

You what?

both of those i mean

quote author=MAS117 link=board=5;threadid=386;start=45#msg15751 date=1074547156]
both of those i mean

Never mind, come and help elect Nym90 to the position of President of the Atlas Forum instead! :)

Hey I asked the question about Republican senator Lincoln Chafee. Did he vote against Iraq War and is it possible that he will jump to Democrats or to Independent??

Doubt it.  He's quite conservative for Rhode Island and is no jumpin Jim.  And anyway, why jump for the permanent minority party from a comfy majority.

That green beret who said Kerry saved his life is a Republican. I bet they'll do a GOP Veterans for Kerry group.

Lincoln was the sole "no" vote on the GOP side. His colleague Reed voted the same way.

But there is no doubt that Jim Jeffords is going to support Democrat candidate?

I think he will because he sitched parties on the basis of disagreeing with Bush.

Wonk-we need your support fellow Republican.  We need you to go tot he Fantasy election sectiona nd then the IMPORTANAT  thread that says registrationa nd simply post "I register"  it is for the Fantasy elections, takes a min of your time and would help out the GOP candidate supersoulty.  Thank you for your time.  

the way IA went, we will soon say Dean who?  before he can worry about Republican votes, he had better concentrate on getting a few Dem ones.

no he was courted along with Jeffords, but now why switch.  His switch would only put him in the minority plus his family has along history of being Republicans.  He tookt he seat over for his father when he died who obviously was also a GOP>

I think if he votes like a Dem for the most part, he's fine.  A state like RI might react more favorably to a seniority argument and Lincoln will use that in every election.  Why start over at the bottom of the ladder?

Democrats for Bush

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- All I heard from the analysts and pundits in the past two weeks after the Democrat caucuses in Iowa and primary in New Hampshire, was that Democrats across the board are "united" against President Bush and want to defeat Bush to the point that they will vote for the "most electable" candidate.


There is no doubt that there is a great deal of hatred for this president at all levels of the Democrat Party -- and that is more than a shame. It is seen in the wild-eyed followers of Howard Dean to the divisive rhetoric of the candidates like Wesley Clark, who refuses to denounce his friend Michael Moore who called President Bush a "deserter." Clark, who friends say would be a Republican had Karl Rove only returned his phone calls, called the Bush administration "the most closed, imperialistic, nastiest administration in living history" -- which just shows that hell hath no fury like a washed up general scorned.

From day one of this administration, many Democrats in the Congress and across the country were unable to put the Florida election behind them and work with a man who had a well-deserved reputation for reaching across the aisle.

But in fact, not all Democrats are "united." Already, nearly 10 months before the election, there are signs of defection among some top name Democrats who have announced their support for the president.

Georgia Sen. Zell Miller, the author of, "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat" (read review), has already endorsed President Bush's re-election, saying that Bush is "the right man at the right time" to govern America. Miller added at the time that many of the Democrat contenders for the presidential nomination, particularly Howard Dean, were trying to use the war in Iraq for "political advantage," which to the Georgia senator is a "disgrace."

"The way I see it," Miller explained, "is that these next five years are going to be crucial in determining the kind of world my grandchildren and great-grandchildren live in, and I don't entrust that to any of these folks that are running out there on the Democratic side."

After Miller's endorsement of George W. Bush, former President Jimmy Carter, who called Howard Dean's antiwar rants "courageous," rushed to disown Miller, accusing him of "betraying all the basic principles that I thought he and I and others shared."

Perhaps that is because the Democrats only continue to carp and complain and flip-flop their positions regarding the war. But even as New Hampshire Democrats were going to the polls to vote for their favorite antiwar antagonist, a plane was landing in Al Gore's home state of Tennessee with 55,000 pounds of material from Libya's nuclear weapons program to be tested. It turns out that all these months that Howard Dean and John Kerry and their pals were condemning George W. Bush's decision to hold Saddam Hussein accountable, Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was getting the message that he had better say goodbye to his weapons programs, or he might be dragged from a hole as Saddam was.

And two weeks ago, another veteran Democrat publicly announced his intention to vote for President Bush, saying that though he has some disagreements on domestic issues, they "pale in importance beside the menace of international terrorism, which threatens our very survival as a nation." Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch said that he will vote for George W. Bush because "he has shown the resolve and courage necessary to wage the war against terrorism."

Koch said the team of Democrat presidential contenders, with the exception of Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, "inspires no such confidence."

Rep. Ralph Hall of Texas agrees with Koch and Miller. In January, Hall, a longtime Democrat, announced he was switching his party affiliation to the Republicans. In making the announcement, Hall said: "I support a Republican president who is constantly criticized by the Democrats who seek to unseat him. In the past year, some members of my party sought to politicize our efforts in the War on Terror and the liberation of Iraq to a point that the president's domestic agenda, which is overwhelmingly supported by my constituents, and the interests of my district were jeopardized."

On a recent trip to Georgia, 12 Democrat state senators threw their support behind the president due in large measure to the leadership he has displayed in the War on Terror. Former Attorney General Griffin Bell, former U.S. Sen. David Gambrell and former Rep. Doug Barnard, all Democrats, have also endorsed the president.

Wesley Clark, Howard Dean and John Kerry have been chasing the support of antiwar protestors like Madonna, Michael Moore, Ted Danson and others. Throughout their campaigns they have shown that they are willing to put their opposition to Bush's efforts in the War on Terror in the spotlight.

But what we are beginning to see is that some Democrats believe national security is no longer a priority for the Democrat Party, and they are echoing the words of John F. Kennedy who said, "Sometimes party loyalty asks too much." Good for them.

Amen.

But will the war on terror and international affairs be the #1 issue this fall.
I, for one, believe it is, but do the American people?

If the election is primarily about foreign affairs, and progress is being made in Iraq, Bush gets the requisite 50.5% nationally he needs to lock.

If the Democrats persuade enough Americans that we no longer need a President who is ready to lead us in war if necessary, that taxes, the environment, health and education are the priority, the battle may be very different.

Exactly. Bush will win if terrorism and national security are the main issues, but I don't think they will, he has been a little too successfull for his own good there.

yeah I hate that logic, but maybe true.  Bush should get credit and be on another level than any dems, not take it off the table.  Like Bush 41, he was so good at foreign policy even though economy was already improving it didn't look as good as his foreign policy credentials.