[Gimpy]

Zell Miller has been making a lot of news lately. It was just a few short years ago that he was praising John Kerry in all sorts of ways, but now he is famous for a harsh attack on John Kerry specifically and liberals generally.

That, however, is not the news: what's news is the idea that some have that this will undermine the Republican chances in the future of what some have labeled as his "unhinged" and "hate-filled" views that will forever now be associated with the "new" republicans.


Zell Miller's address to the RNC will, I think, go down as a critical moment in the past campaign, and probably in the history of the Republican party.

I kept thinking of the contrast with the Democrats' keynote speaker, Barack Obama, a post-racial, smiling, expansive young American, speaking about national unity and uplift. Then you see Zell Miller, his face rigid with anger, his eyes blazing with years of frustration as his Dixiecrat vision became slowly eclipsed among the Democrats.

Remember who this man is: once a proud supporter of racial segregation, a man who lambasted LBJ for selling his soul to the negroes. His speech that night was in this vein, a classic Dixiecrat speech, jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric.

As native born southerner to this country myself, and as someone who has been to many Southern states and enjoyed astonishing hospitality and warmth and sophistication of our true heritage, I have long dismissed some of the Northern stereotypes about the South. But Zell Miller did his best to revive them. The man's speech was not merely crude; it added whole universes to the word crude.


Miller had absolutely every right to critize John Kerry's record on defense in the Senate in his early years. Some of it was ripe for criticism, and I'll not condemn him (Miller) for that. However, Miller fails to recognize and offer any simliar criticism of Dick Cheney for even MORE "cuts" to the same defense" programs" during and AFTER that same time period??? Where is the justice or "fair play" in these deceptions??

But that doesn't mean Kerry is a traitor or hates America's troops or believes that the U.S. is responsible for global terror(just as the same I'm sure is true of Cheney), if so, then by God so is Dick Cheney, right?. And the attempt to say so is a despicable attempt to smear someone's very patriotism.


Appealing to the crudest form of patriotism and the easiest smears is wrong when it is performed by folks like Michael Moore, and it is JUST as wrong when it is spat out by zealots & traitors like Zell Miller. His speech that night was therefore a revealing night for me. I watched a Democrat at a GOP Convention convince me that I could never, ever be a Republican again (and I once was BTW). If they wheel out lying, despicable, angry old men like this as their keynote, I'll take Obama. Any day thank you very much!


Zell will have his "place" in history right alongside Lester Maddox, George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, David Dukes, and all the other race-baiting, hate-mongers and Grand Wizards of their time! I wouldn't take the time to piss on him if he were on fire!