Last week, President Bush received endorsements from more than 40 Mississippi Democrats. The Democratic Party should take note of this instead of dismissing it.
The platoon of Mississippi Democrats endorsing Bush at a Jackson rally included former House Speaker Tim Ford, Rep. Charlie Capps, former Lt. Gov. Brad Dye and even the beloved former Democratic Caucus member, retired Third District U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery.
Previously, I witnessed Insurance Commissioner George Dale at the Neshoba County Fair denounce the direction of the “National Democratic” party. While asserting to the crowd that he was still a Democrat, he endorsed Bush and criticized the Republican Party for standing up for only the elites in our nation.
Congressman Montgomery credits U.S. Sen. Zell Miller’s (D-Ga.) keynote speech as the catalyst for the rally of Mississippi Democrats. “We all saw Zell Miller take a stand for President Bush last month at the Republican Convention. Despite his political affiliation, he realizes the stakes are high and that President Bush is the man for the job,” Montgomery said.
Miller, who was regarded as the nation’s best governor when he gave Bill Clinton’s 1992 keynote speech at the Democratic Convention, was roundly criticized by everyone from the former President Jimmy Carter to David Gergen, adviser to numerous Republican presidents and Bill Clinton.
Gergen and many prominent Democrats compared Miller to Lester Maddox, the segregationist governor for whom Miller worked more than 40 years ago. Gergen said Maddox was “a man of hate,” and that Miller was “a man of hate,” too. The Democratic Party’s response to Miller was not only shameful but indicative of why Democrats cannot compete in the South. The party’s activists put out a dossier on Miller calling attention to his record as a Southern conservative, which have become code words for “racist.” They said that Miller showed signs that he suffered from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
If you don’t like the messenger, call him crazy and ratchet up the wounds of the past. I would not be surprised if they were to put out a file on Sonny Montgomery highlighting his nonexistent hard-core segregationist past. They might even throw in claims of him fathering a black child.
This futile exercise to discredit disenchanted Southern Democrats is further solidifying the South for Republicans.
If you listen to the Democrats, they will tell you that the South has gone Republican over the past three decades solely because of the Democrats’ support for civil rights. Notwithstanding the fact that Republicans in the 1960s Congresses overwhelmingly supported civil rights legislation, I have no doubt that white Southerners en masse left the Democratic Party in protest of Pres. Johnson’s civil rights agenda.
What is disregarded is the fact that many Southerners who were progressive on race relations during that time left the big tent because the party of the fundamentalist Christian William Jennings Bryan was no more. They saw the Democrats as the party of abortion, alternative lifestyles, hippies, drug users and radical feminist agenda. Whether you agree with it or not, this ran contrary to the values of the Southern Bible Belt.
Liberal Democrats need to stop trying to re-fight the civil rights battles of the 60’s and make the party inclusive to socially conservative Southerners or they will always fail.
The new Southern Democrats like John Edwards only make it worse. Charles Pickering, a man who stood up for racial justice and was a Republican from Mississippi when it wasn’t popular, was shamefully besmirched by Sen. Edwards in an attempt to paint Pickering as a racist. Edwards, instead of standing up for what was right, stood with Sen. Ted Kennedy who has shown his contempt for Southern Conservatives and even blatantly called Pickering and others “Neanderthals.” Imagine what would happen if a Republican senator labeled a black judicial nominee a Neanderthal.
Democrats have to stop treating social conservatives like ideological lepers and make them a part of their “big tent party.” If not, they won’t ever be able to compete in every geographic region of the United States, like the Republicans can.
Edward Sanders is a junior political science major. He can be reached at [email protected].