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I tried to tell you . .
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Democrats repel voters, who put faith in
freedom
By Zell Miller
(As Appeared in the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution-Novembr 4, 2004)
America's faith in freedom has been reaffirmed. With the re-election of
President Bush, America recommitted itself once again to expanding freedom
and promoting liberty. Only the 1864 re-election of Abraham Lincoln, the
1944 re-election of Franklin Roosevelt and the 1980 election of Ronald
Reagan rival this victory as milestones in the preservation of our
security by the advancement of freedom.
This election validated not
just freedom, but also the faith our Founding Fathers placed in average
folks to navigate the course of this great nation. By weighing the
greatest issues at the gravest times and choosing our path, ordinary
people have again accomplished extraordinary things. With courage and
caution, rather than fear and timidity, the voters chose a path to ensure
others would enjoy the same freedom to set their own path.
This
election outcome should have been implausible, if not impossible. With a
litany of complaints - bad economy, bad deficit, bad foreign war, bad gas
prices - amplified by a national media that discarded any pretense of
neutrality, a national opposition party should have won this
election.
But the Democratic Party is no longer a national party.
As difficult as the challenges are - both real and fabricated - Democrats
offered no solution that was either believable or acceptable to vast
regions of America.
Tax increases to grow the economy are not a
solution that is believable or acceptable. Democratic promises of fiscal
responsibility are unbelievable in the face of massive new spending
promises. A foreign policy based on the strength of "allies" such as
France is unacceptable. A strong national defense policy is just not
believable coming from a candidate who built a career as an anti-war
veteran, an anti-military candidate and an anti-action
senator.
Democratic Party policies haven't sold in large sections
of America in decades, and the only success of Democrats in presidential
elections for 40 years was when they pitched themselves as pro-growth,
low-tax, strong-defense, fiscally responsible, values-oriented
candidates.
Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton hummed the tune but never
really sang the song, and that's why Democrat prospects have gone south in
the South. In 1980, the South had 20 Democrats and just six Republicans in
the Senate. As recently as 1994, the Senate had 17 Democrats and nine
Republicans from the South.
A decade later, the number had reversed
to 17 Republicans and nine Democrats. With this election, it is 22
Republicans and just four Democrats from the South.
When will
national Democrats sober up and admit that that dog won't hunt? Secular
socialism, heavy taxes, big spending, weak defense, limitless lawsuits and
heavy regulation - that pack of beagles hasn't caught a rabbit in the
South or Midwest in years.
The most recent failed nominee for
president stands as proof that the national Democratic Party will continue
to dwindle. The South has gone from just one-fourth of the Electoral
College in 1960 to almost a third today.
To put this in
perspective, that gain is equal to all the electoral votes in Ohio. Yet
there was not a single Southern state where John Kerry had any real
chance. Would anyone like to place bets on the electoral strength of the
South by 2012? Maybe they should tax stupidity.
When you write off
centrist and conservative policies that reflect the will of people in the
South and Midwest, you write off the South and Midwest. Democrats have
never learned from the second or third or fifth kick of a mule. They
continue to change only the makeup on, rather than makeup of, the Democrat
Party.
And so we have a realignment election. For the first time,
in an "us vs. them" election and in the toughest of situations,
Republicans have been re-elected to the White House, the Senate and the
House of Representatives.
Confronting an opposition that can win a
divided electorate in the worst of times and that has a growing electoral
base, the national Democratic Party has a choice: continue down this path
toward irrelevance or reverse course. As the last Truman Democrat, I hope
my party makes the right choice but know I will not be allowed to be part
of it. Such is the price you pay when you love your nation more than your
party.
And so while I retire with little hope for the near-term
viability of the party I've spent my life building, I retire with a quiet
satisfaction that after witnessing the struggle of democracy over
communism and fascism, the fear I once held that America might not rise to
meet this new challenge of terrorism has vanished like a fog under the
radiance of a new dawn. While the threat is still real, the shadow looming
across a promising future is gone.
And the credit for that goes to
one man. Like the last lion of England, Winston Churchill, George W. Bush
has stood alone and risked all to give the world a new, clearer path to
the advancement of freedom.
Abraham Lincoln, in his second annual
message to Congress, stated: "In giving freedom to the slave, we assure
freedom for the free - honorable alike in what we give and what we
preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of
earth."
George Bush has injected into a region of enslavement an
incurable dose of freedom, and thus nobly saved that "last, best hope of
earth" - free men.
- Zell Miller is Georgia's Democratic
U.S. senator. |