In a letter published in this morning's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, former President Jimmy Carter excoriates Senator (and fellow Democrat) Zell Miller for his participation in the Republican National Convention last week. Miller was the keynote speaker.

In Miller's speech, he took the Democratic party to task for becoming too rabidly and radically leftist, and alienating many around the nation. Carter's letter accuses Miller of being motivated by greed.

It was a loyal Democrat, Roy Barnes, who appointed you as U.S. senator when you were out of office. By your historically unprecedented disloyalty, you have betrayed our trust.

Everyone knows that you were chosen to speak at the Republican National Convention because of your being a "Democrat," and it's quite possible that your rabid speech damaged our party and paid the GOP some transient dividends.

Perhaps more troublesome of all is seeing you adopt an established and very effective Republican campaign technique of destroying the character of opponents by wild and false allegations.

Zell, I have known you for 42 years and have, in the past, respected you as a trustworthy political leader and a personal friend. But now, there are many of us loyal Democrats who feel uncomfortable in seeing that you have chosen the rich over the poor, unilateral pre-emptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, lies and obfuscation over the truth, and the political technique of personal character assassination as a way to win elections or to garner a few moments of applause.

I don't think Carter regrets a damn thing. I think he's more pissed off that he -- and the remainder of the Democratic Party -- got caught with their collective pants down.

Posted by: mhking at 03:48 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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