What Has Happened to the [Democratic] Party?

This is a partial transcript from "Hannity & Colmes," July 28, 2004, that has been edited for clarity.

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SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: Joining us, our first guest. He is the author of a "New York Times" best seller "A National Party No More," Senator Zell Miller, who also delivered the keynote address at the 1992 Democratic Convention in support of then Governor Bill Clinton. He now joins us tonight. Senator, thank you for being with us.

SEN. ZELL MILLER, D-GA.: Good to be with you.

HANNITY: You are not here in Boston. Nice to be with you. You will be speaking in New York at the Republican Convention?

MILLER: That's correct. You know, I've been watching this convention, Sean. And somewhere David Copperfield must be turning green with envy, because this is the greatest illusion that I think anyone has come ever come up with.

Here we have two men who are very, very well known, who have long time voting records, and yet we're told they're going to be — they're going to be defined in these four days. They have not exactly been in a criminal protection program. We know them well. They have both got long voting records.

And that is how you define a person. You define a person by looking at their voting record. That's what tells you who a person really is. Whenever they make speeches and do political commercials that is telling you who they want you to think they are, not who they are.

HANNITY: So what you're basically saying is something I think I have been saying pretty often this week, that this is really about manipulating the American people, because the positions it seems that they're taking are inconsistent, especially in the case with John Kerry with his record over a 20-year period of time. As a democrat you are out there saying this, what is the reaction that you have taken this very strong stand?

MILLER: Well, the people that I talk with in Georgia, I've been in Georgia all week; they know what's going on. They think it's a sham.

Senator Kerry has four months service in Vietnam. It was heroic service and we must never forget that, but he has also had 240 months of service in the United States Senate. And it has not been so heroic and we must not forget that either.

This is the man who voted against every weapons system that we needed to win the Cold War. And that we use now in our fight against terror. If John Kerry had prevailed back in the 1980s instead of Ronald Reagan, we would still be in the Cold War. We would still have the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall would still be up.

HANNITY: You also said, Senator, in a "Wall Street Journal" piece, you said that you don't think you have changed at all. You claim the Democratic Party has mastered the art of division and diversion in this particular campaign. You talk about them on the issue of taxes and then you also go on to say that they have not, John Kerry and John Edwards, kept faith with the men and women who are fighting this war on terror.

Very strong criticism. And you're going to speak at the Republican Convention. Will you now consider going to the Republican Party?

MILLER: No, I'm a Democrat. I went to my first political convention back in 1972 as a Scoop Jackson Democrat, pro defense. And the Democrats that I have supported in the past, Al Gore in 1988… Go back and look what kind of Democrat he was back then. Look at the kind of Democrat Jimmy Carter ran as in 1976 when I supported him. And look at the kind of Democrat that Bill Clinton was when he ran in 1992. This Democratic Party today has...

HANNITY: What has happened to the party?

MILLER: Well, they have drifted far, far to the left, and they have become completely beholden to these variant left, liberal special interest groups for whom they depend upon for money and for manpower.

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: Senator, this is Alan Colmes. You have been watching this, tell me what the Democrats are doing right?

MILLER: What are they doing right? Very little these days, on the national level. You still have a lot of Democrats, especially in the South, and I think scattered throughout the nation, who are doing things right. You are going to have one on in a little while, Senator Joe Lieberman. I think Senator Joe Lieberman is doing things right.

I think Senator Evan Bayh from Indiana. I think he is doing things right. Ben Nelson from Nebraska. I can name you a lot of moderate Democrats, but they're not in leadership positions. The Democratic Party in the last four-and-a-half years that I have been involved in it in Washington, has been the party of Kerry and Edwards and Daschle. And it is far, far to the left of the American people. It's so far left that it's off the charts.

COLMES: Senator, you recently just talked to Sean about Senator Kerry's record. You said of the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in 2001, that John Kerry worked to strengthen our military. In 2002, you both voted for a bill that provided $355 billion additional military spending, $21 billion more than the previous year. You and John Kerry have similar voting records on weapons systems. And now you say exactly the opposite of what you said and how you voted.

MILLER: There are so many votes that you have in the United States Senate that you're going to have somewhere you vote alike. But when you look at the complete vote of John Kerry over the last twenty years, Alan, you will see that he voted against every cent — he voted to cut every single one of the weapons systems that has won the Cold War, and that we have used to fight the war on terror today.

That's just a fact. I mean, this is also a man talking about doing something about intelligence. When he was on the intelligence committee, the six years he served on the intelligence committee, they had 49 public meetings; he missed 38 of them. He didn't even show up for work. He didn't even show up to listen to what was going on.

COLMES: Senator, you are saying now different things than you said at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner. You are saying different things about the Democrats then you said in 1992 when you were one of the keynote speakers of the convention when you talked about you're your Democrats were the party of hope.

For 12 years the Republicans have dealt in cynicism and skepticism. At that time you were referring back to the previous 12 years of Reagan and Bush. Are you going to now going to revise what you said about those presidents then?

MILLER: No. The Republican Party has become the party of hope and opportunity and responsibility, like Bill Clinton talked about back in 1992. And it's the Democrats who have become the party of division. They're the ones who are practicing division, as hard as they possibly can to divide this country.

I mean, look at the Democratic primary that went on in Iowa and in New Hampshire. If that wasn't dividing the country, I don't know what was. And it was doing it in a time of war, Alan at the worst possible time. It used to be said that politics stopped at the water's edge. That's the way it was back during the days of F.D.R. and Harry Truman.

Harry Truman got the Marshal Plan through, because of Republican Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican Senator from Michigan who helped him. John Kennedy and Richard Nixon came together to support the Marshal Plan. You had bipartisanship back then, not the kind of division you have right now.

COLMES: Senator, we only have a moment left. You speaking at the Republican Convention, and here we had Ron Reagan speaking at the Democratic Convention. Is there a similarity there?

MILLER: No, there's not a similarity at all. And I hope that when Ron Reagan went back to his hotel room and looked in the mirror, he looked at a person who had once been an embryo who was protected and that's why he became an adult human being.

HANNITY: Thank you Senator Zell Miller, as always.

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