Carter: Millers appointment to Senate was a mistake

<p>Former President Jimmy Carter says the appointment of Georgias Zell Miller to the Senate was a mistake because his fellow ex-governor betrayed all the basic principles that I thought he and I and others shared.</p><p>The comments, which Carter made Wednesday on the radio program FOX News Live with Alan Colmes, are the latest in a string of attacks prominent Democrats have made lately concerning the maverick senator who has endorsed President Bushs re-election and penned a new book arguing his party is out of touch with the South.</p><p>When Colmes asked Carter about Miller, the former president first said, I would rather not even comment about Zell Miller on the radio, then proceeded to call the appointment one of the worst mistakes then-Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes made in his final four years in office.</p><p>Barnes tapped Miller in 2000 to fill the vacancy left by the death of Republican Sen. Paul Coverdell. He then went on to win a special election to complete Coverdells term, which ends in January 2005. Miller has announced he wont seek re-election, and Republicans are viewed as the favorites to capture the seat.</p><p>Miller dismissed Carters comments Thursday, calling the former president a friend of more than 40 years.</p><p>And over those 40-plus years, I bet Ive received about two dozen personal notes from Jimmy Carter, Miller said. Half of them are giving me hell, and the other half are bragging on me. So, I figure Im doing OK batting .500 with Jimmy Carter.</p><p>Barnes declined to comment Thursday on the squabble between the two other former governors.</p><p>In Millers book, A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat, he devotes a chapter to analyzing why Carter won the presidential race in 1976 and lost in 1980.</p><p>This Georgian, who had generated so much regional pride, saw his Southern base decimated, Miller wrote of the latter contest. ... Some Southerners would say he forgot where he came from. Others would say it was the magic of Ronald Reagan. I say it was because after campaigning as a new kind of Democrat, he governed too much like an old one.</p><p>___</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>HASH(0x2865d98)</p>

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