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Cleland in 1996 ran unopposed in the Democratic primary to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Senator Sam Nunn. With backing from incumbent Democratic President Bill Clinton, in the general election he eked out a 49-to-48-percent victory over a Republican businessman, winning because a Democrat-controlled state legislature had changed prior election laws that a cycle earlier would have required a run-off. Cleland in a 1996 run-off against an undivided conservative vote would have lost and never become a Senator.

While Georgia's voters were shifting from being conservative Democrats to conservative Republicans, Senator Cleland chose to be a leftwing Democrat on many issues. By 1999, the left-wing Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) rated his voting record as 100 percent on the left side of legislation. Representing a Southern state, he voted for tougher gun controls and against a ban on the procedure known as partial-birth abortion, viewed by its critics as infanticide. He voted to allow public school clinics to give children morning-after abortifacient pills without parental permission. He opposed an amendment to ban aid to schools that barred the Boy Scouts.

In the 2000 election, George W. Bush won Georgia by a landslide 55-43 margin over Democrat Al Gore. It was evident that Senator Cleland, who had taken the dinosaur path to extinction by voting far to the left of his fellow Georgians, had almost zero chance of being re-elected in 2002. But rather than moderate his positions, Cleland voted against confirmation of former Senator John Ashcroft to be Attorney General. He even voted against ending the discriminatory income tax burden on married couples known as the "marriage penalty." Cleland also voted 22 times "to gut or delay the Bush tax cut," noted the Wall Street Journal. As a politician, he took thousands of dollars from radical "Hanoi Jane" Fonda, who openly sided with the Communist enemy in the Vietnam war. Even though Cleland had served as a soldier overseas and his 2002 opponent had not, the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) cited Cleland's weak voting record on national security and endorsed Cleland's Republican opponent Congressman Saxby Chambliss.

In 2002, Cleland ran for a second Senate term with all the advantages of incumbency and as a Democrat in what for more than a century had been a solidly-Democratic state. He spent more than $10 million, a third more moneythan his Republican opponent but lost by a Georgia landslide, repudiated by voters, 53 percent to 46 percent. He lost not only in rural Georgia, but also in liberal Atlanta.

Rather than blame his own leftwing, un-Georgian politics for this humiliating rejection, Cleland declared that he had lost because President Bush came into Georgia five times to campaign against him. His personal vendetta against the President was evident in Cleland's venomous statements on the eve of the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

http://frontpagemag.com/A...EC-459A-82A4-2F1080B4D0C5

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

Why is it that every time Max Cleland's voting record is questioned, he fires back with a string of irrelevant arguments about how Saxby Chambliss is calling him unpatriotic?

The latest television ad shows a picture of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and talks about how Max Cleland has voted 11 times against the President and Homeland Security Bill. It asserts nothing about Cleland being unpatriotic and certainly does not, as he claims, "...attack his very being;" Unless his very being is to be against the President and against what the majority of Georgians want.

Why does Cleland continue to vote against a bill that the President wants and the country desperately needs? Does Cleland want more Americans to be at risk because of his liberal politics?

Cleland claims that he is going to vote for a compromise bill that satisfies everyone's concerns. This a flat-out lie! He just wants to vote for a bill that includes the interests of his union buddies that fund him so well. If his so-called compromise bill passes, then it will make sure that incompetent workers will continue to endanger American lives for months, even years, before they can be fired and replaced with competent people.

http://www.thecitizen.com...21023/opinion/ltr-03.html