WASHINGTON — Georgia Sen. Zell Miller, the highest profile
Democrat to endorse President Bush for re-election, will speak
at the Republican National Convention later this summer, a
congressional aide said Friday.
Miller drew a sharp rebuke from the dean of the state's
congressional delegation, Democratic Rep. John Lewis, who
called the senator's decision "a shame and a disgrace."
According to the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity,
Miller will give his address on Wednesday night of the
four-day convention in New York that begins Aug. 30. The
Bush-Cheney campaign was expected to make an announcement
Monday, the aide said.
The speech by Miller, a former two-term governor, comes 12
years after he delivered the keynote address for Bill Clinton
at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, also held in New
York.
Miller, who is retiring in January, has voted with
Republicans more often than his own party and has been a key
sponsor of many of Bush's top legislative priorities,
including the Republican's tax cuts and education plan.
In May, Miller spoke at the Georgia Republican convention
and criticized Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry as
an "out-of-touch, ultraliberal from Taxachusetts" whose
foreign and domestic policies would seriously weaken the
country.
"I'm afraid that my old Democratic 'ties that bind' have
become unraveled," Miller said.
In 2001, Miller had told a Georgia Democratic Party
gathering that Kerry, the four-term Massachusetts senator and
decorated Vietnam War veteran, was "an authentic" American
hero who had worked to strengthen the military.
Miller's recent book, "A National Party No More: The
Conscience of a Conservative Democrat," is now a national
best-seller. In it, he assails members of his own party,
including Clinton.
"I think he has sold his soul for a mess of pottage," said
Lewis, in a reference to a speech Miller gave as a
congressional candidate 40 years ago in which he argued that
President Johnson was "a Southerner who sold his birthright
for a mess of dark pottage" because of his support for the
Civil Rights Act.
Pottage is defined as a thick soup or stew of
vegetables.
Miller later changed his position on civil rights, even
leading an unsuccessful fight as governor to remove the
Confederate emblem from the Georgia state flag.
Bobby Kahn, the chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party,
said he wasn't surprised.
"Maybe I'll switch to the Republican Party so I can speak
at the Democratic Convention and bash Bush," Kahn said. "It
makes about as much sense."
Kahn was a top aide to Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes, who
appointed Miller to the Senate following the death of Miller's
predecessor, Republican Sen. Paul Coverdell.
"I advocated his appointment," Kahn said of Miller. "He
said he would be independent and he was for a while, but he
hasn't been lately. He's been in lockstep with the Republicans
and I don't know what's happened to him. It's really kind of
sad."
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