Departing Controlled Flight
As I've said before, I used to be a Democrat. Like a lot of conservatives - including many of the best ones - I started my politically-aware life as a liberal of sorts.
I joke that America would be better off if America were a two-party system - Republicans and Libertarians. It is a joke. I keep telling myself...
...and I have to keep telling myself - because so much of the Democrat party these days seems to have completely departed the surly bonds of reason. It would be good to have a rational, reasonable, grown-up party on the other side of the aisle, if only because if you see a two-party system as a check and balance on the party in power, the current system is unworkable; it's like having a sane, rational, adult worker's output checked by a manic-depressive whose medication just isn't working.
Zell Miller agrees.
His article ends:
I still love the Democratic Party — the party of Roosevelt and Truman and Kennedy. But the more screaming and ranting I hear, the more I wonder whether those Democratic heroes of old would find much to be proud of today.
It's the end - but it's also the theme.
I have been a proud member of the Democratic Party from the time I first breathed the Georgia mountain air. But lately I can barely recognize my once-great party. Between Al Gore's rants, Michael Moore's falsehoods, the felons-for-hire shenanigans of America Coming Together and Moveon.org's crazy conspiracy theories, the Democratic Party has become a coalition of the wild-eyed. Driven by a rabid desire to defeat President Bush, they seem eager to say and do anything to tear him apart.
All the loudmouthed liberals were recently shouting in unison. Gore accused Bush of deliberately deceiving the American people before the Iraq war. According to Gore, Bush made up connections between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein to dupe us into Iraq. But as with so much of what Gore has said recently, it's just not true.
Fearless prediction - expect a full-bore campaign by the likes of Moore, Franken and MoveOn to tell us what kind of a Democrat Zell Miller
isn't.
Posted by Mitch at
July 5, 2004 09:12 AM
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I must not be made of as stern stuff as Miller.
I voted for Clinton three times - twice in '92 and once (albeit reluctantly) in '96. And when, in the spring of '97, I finally saw the damage that Clinton - and Clinton-love - were doing to the party, I boldly predicted to my friend Joe over at urbanfarmhouse.org (on the golf course; we weren't blogging then, of course) that Clinton would be out before January. Joe, a staunch Libertarian then and now, was dubious and rightfully so, as it turned out.
It was a crazy time. The Democrats were going batty trying to cover Clinton like a turd in a catbox, but he kept popping back up. And finally they went completely insane, circling the wagons and ignoring Clinton while they attacked everybody that didn't regard him as a god.
I couldn't join in that - I recognized the irrational nature of Clinton-love, and the fact that they were smearing anybody who said anything against him as a "Clinton-hater," ironically, turned me into just that. I started out hating what he had done to the Democratic party. I wound up hating what he - and they - have done to the country. Zell Miller is where I was in Spring of '97. But he's been a Democrat a whole heckuva a lot longer than I was. I wish him luck but I think he'll be out of the picture long before anything good comes out of the Democrats.
Which is a pity.
None of my contacts with Democrats nowadays has caused me to regret my leaving the party. They *have* made me regret my long-lost adolescence, though, with its easy reliance on snotty, self-pitying one-liners in place of debate, cries of "hypocrisy" whenever apparent inconsistency is encountered, and rock-solid certainty that anyone who disagrees with me is stupid or crazy, not to mention Wrong.
Now I'm stupid, crazy, and Wrong. But there are a lot of great people over here with me.
That's me - stupid, crazy, and Wrong since '98. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Posted by: Brian Jones at July 5, 2004 11:34 AMBrian, I'm with you...though my conversion, like that of so many others, happened in the aftermath of 9/11.
It began with Michael Moore and his atrocious comment that Bin Laden should have bombed a city that voted for Bush instead of NYC.
I can not go back to a party that has gotten into bed with scum like him. I cannot go back to a party that has the likes of Al Gore (I am ASHAMED I ever voted for him.)
I could go on, but I'll close with this: MANY people who were once Dems will never vote for them again. I truly doubt that kind of switch has happened to Republicans.
And there is a new group of Republicans emerging now too. Not just our 9/11 converts, but Schwarzenegger Republicans. That's the future, not Nancy Pelosi or, God help us, John Kerry.
Posted by: RMcLeod at July 6, 2004 04:35 AM"I voted for Clinton three times - twice in '92 and once (albeit reluctantly) in '96."
How did you wind up voting for Clinton twice in 1992?
Posted by: PJZ at July 6, 2004 05:44 PMPJZ, I voted for him in the '92 Democratic Presidential primary, and then in the election.
I probably would have voted against him in a meaningful Democratic primary in '96, but didn't have the opportunity. I registered as a Republican and voted for Lamar Alexander in the Republican primary, but couldn't bring myself to vote for Dole in the election. I can't say exactly why. I recall he seemed out of touch and part of an Old Guard that I wasn't ready to return to power. Whether I fell prey to Clinton's painting him that way or if it was really the case I have no idea now.
Posted by: Brian Jones at July 7, 2004 09:27 AM