I do know that Miller scared the bejeezus out of a lot of people on the Left last night. Read either the blog accounts of Matt Welch’s or Matt Yglesis’ (sp?) – those poor boys practically wet their chinos.

And yes, the comparison to Buchanan’s ‘92 speech is the new meme. Rove’s main trick now is to counter that comparison.

Don’t worry, the Times will get to Zell soon enough. They are just lining up the Kerry camp quotes. They will go after Zell like this. The Kerry camp will whine that this is just more smear tactics by “angry ” republicans. They will say that Zell was attacking Kerry’s Patriotism.Then the Times will compare it to the Buchannan speach. Never mind the fact that Millers speech was just about defense and Buchannons screed was about social issues, the Times will use this excuse to paint all Republicans as angry, racist, homophobes and zenophobes. Like Matthews they will bring up Nixon and the southern strategy so they can tar Miller woth exploiting the racial divide in this country. The fact that this makes no sense and has nothing to do with Miller’s speach is beside the point. They know why Kerry said almost nothing about his Senate record in the Democratic Convention. It is too embarrasing when it comes to national defense and foreign policy. Miller exposed Kerry to the country and the Times will use the old ploy of portraying the republicans as the party of Lester Maddox and red neck racists who will force Americans to go to church and force women to stay in the home and produce children. Thery are scared that Bush will win and they will pull out all the stops to to help Kerry.

Thought you might find this interesting re: the Viva La Gaping Hole in Men’s Heads subthread.

Once he got passed the warmup/intro phase where he was rushing and I was wishing he’d slow down and let an audience that CLEARLY wanted to be involved get involved, I sat there slack jawed. At least for the while I remained sitting. I wound up standing. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. A Dem standing there at the RNC, on Prime Time Telly, hammering the snot out of the Democratic Party and its presidential ticket.

The kids are off at school, the wife and dog were fast asleep. I swear that I came damn close to waking the Mrs. and telling her history was being made and she needed to sit up and watch it with me. I’ve never seen anything like it.

The NYT today all but pretended it never happened. Barely a word. I quickly scanned the convention secton (P) and only found one little mention buried in with some other article. My wife picked it up and did a more detailed scan and finally located the story about Zell. But they only excerpted his remarks and pointed to their website where the full text is. The excerpts went only as far as that warmup portion I mentioned above. None of slap across the face he delivered to his own party.

BTW, one thing I haven’t heard yet is recognition that this isn’t something new coming from Zell Miller. It isn’t as if he hasn’t tried to get his party to wake up prior to this. That speech basically says it all – the Dems will never listen until some of their own turn on them with devastating effect. Time to drop a little thank you email to Mr. Zell Miller. Those of you who would like to remain Dems or return to a sane party really should at least drop the Dems a hint to the Dem leadership that their “manic obsessions” are killing them.

As far as the MSM is concerned Zell is no longer a Democrat. When he spoke for Clinton in the 92 election he was a moderate new southern DEM. Now that he supports Bush and is going against a member of his party he is a angry white southern male with ties to Lester Maddux and the KKK. A symbol of how the Republicans are still using the racist Nixon southern strategy. The fact that his speach was about national defense and not social issues makes to difference to the Kerry flaks. They know that Zell hit it out of the park so you can expect a full court press attack by the media dragging out the racist history of the south and Millers ties to it. Of course they won’t mention the fact that the Dems still have Sen. Byrd, a former member of the KKK, as one of their senior leaders. He is a real Democrat.

Especially when they’re using it on a Democrat.

Excellent example of “who can say what”. I cant see any republican saying that and get away with it, but Zell Miller could.

His line “what’s happened to my party??” just spoke volumes of his frustration, and I thought the whole thing was just devastatingly effective and powerful. I cant see any way that what he said can be countered in any meaningful way. I’d be proud to live in Georgia right now (I have colleagues that do…).

Sat in front of the tube today and got three fascinating glimpses of the campaign:

1) Kerry’s Legion Speech: If this was Kerry ’sharpening his Iraq/WOT message’, then I missed something. Yes, his criticism of Bush as balder, but as to a meaningful critique…he was (once again) all over the place. It seems that what he wanted to do was move away from his theme of ‘The solution is better management’ to something else, but by the time he was done, the ’something else’ part remained pretty elusive. So the bottom line is we still don’t have a meaningful statement of policy position on Iraq or the WOT, and it is now September. To me Kerry looked both uncomfortable and nervous, and he stumbled over his speech several times (something I have never seen him do before) which just highlighted the fact that he appeared to out of sorts. The receiption was polite but tepid…certainly no enthusiasm generated.

2) McAuliffe’s Press Conference: Terry McAuliffe may be able to raise more money that God, but he is an absolute disaster when it comes to being a party chairman. He has an uncanny ability to strike the exact wrong tone at the exact wrong time. His press conference today was a perfect example…the text of Zell Miller’s speech was out by that time, and McAuliffe was getting some hard (but good) questions about how it could be that Miller would be doing what he was doing. McAuliffe’s answer: to sell his book and get on talk shows. McAuliffe was obviously bitter about it, and just as obviously too intellectually helpless to give a passable answer. It didn’t go down well at all with the press. One thing is certain, today’s Terry wasn’t the smartass we saw a couple of months ago accusing Bush of being AWOL. Terry knows Kerry is in trouble, and it is very obvious Terry hasn’t a clue as to what to do about it.

3) Miller’s Speech: That was an awesome display of red-meat politics. Miller looked like he was ready to sprint to MA and bitch-slap both Kerry and Kennedy, then sprint back to NYC and give the speech again. He did not give the impression that he was going to put up with any bullshit from anyone about anything. This was confirmed by his later Hardball performance…he had Matthews begging for his life by the end. And the ’spitball’ line is going to play for the rest of the campaign. You simply cannot underestimate the impact of a sitting Democratic Senator going to the Republican convention and giving that kind of speech. You combine Rudy’s speech with Zell’s speech and you have a combination of punches that I cannot imagine John Kerry can answer. And make no mistake about it…Zell Miller was calling John Kerry out tonight, daring him to respond. He called Kerry a girlie-man tonight, but it was no joke.

I have the impression that this convention is going to bury the Democrats. As of last week, John Kerry had to answer the SBVFT to get to Bush. Now he has to get by the SBVFT, Rudy and Zell…and I see nothing that indicates Kerry even understands this yet.

Zell was great! The MSM is going to go after him. I saw Matthews on cornball and he was bringing up the racism card. He was talking about Nixon’s southern strategy as if it happened yesterday and trying to tie Zell into it. The dems and their lap dogs in the press are getting panicky. If they have to bring up the old chestnuts about all republicans being closet kluxers they must be feeling pretty shakey about Kerry. Chris is getting desperate.