The best news for the GOP is that the Democrats are ignoring Georgia’s Zell Miller. His new book, A National Party No More,” catalogues the insults southerners have suffered from the national Democratic party and those they’ve given back in return–like three candidates (McGovern, Mondale and Gore) who received zero electoral votes from the Old Confederacy.
His new book is being excerpted in the Washington Times, and Zell’s favorite opening line is there:
Once upon a time, the most successful Democratic leader of them all, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, looked south and said, “I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.”
Today our national Democratic leaders look south and say, “I see one-third of a nation and it can go to hell.”
Interestingly, Miller has mis-read the Howard Dean/Confederate Flag story. He thinks Dean is the screw up for having stereotypical attitudes about the South. “That’s not what the South is about today,” Miller said. “The South is progressive, intelligent, out of the woods and into the good life.”
But those same southerners, as Miller should know, see the Confederate flag as a symbol (a problematic one, to be sure) of the South as a place. The vast majority of southern whites don’t fly one or even care to, but they inevitably react negatively when they see it being kicked around. There’s a reason why the banner still flies over Mississippi and Miller’s own Georgia. If Miller believes that it’s solely because of racism, then he’s another Democrat who still has something to learn about the South.