Jackson Free Press

Conservative columnist/blogger Andrew Sullivan had this to say about Georgia "Democrat" Zell Miller's performance at the convention last night: "Zell Miller's address will, I think, go down as a critical moment in this campaign, and maybe 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 tonight was in this vein, a classic Dixiecrat speech, jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric. As an immigrant to this country and as someone who has been to many Southern states and enjoyed astonishing hospitality and warmth and sophistication, I long dismissed some of the Northern stereotypes about the South. But Miller did his best to revive them. The man's speech was not merely crude; it added whole universes to the word crude."

Previous Comments

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137126

Comment

After gauging the harsh reaction from Democrats and Republicans alike to Sen. Zell Millerís keynote address at the Republican National Convention, the Bush campaign ó led by the first lady ó backed away Thursday from Millerís savage attack on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, insisting that the estranged Democrat was speaking only for himself. Link Please tell me how you can have a renegade keynote speaker? His speech had to be pre-approved just as other speeches are for these conventions. Spin... Spin... Spin. On another note, did anyone see Miller get hostile with Chris Matthews of Hardball? He was engulfed in cheers while standing on the Madison Square Garden podium Wednesday night. But none of the crowd's ebullience stuck to him. In an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews afterward, Miller told the "Hardball" host to "get out of my face" and said "I wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel." He then fell into a hissy fit and cancelled the interview. The Daily Show did a wonderful treatment of Miller's speech. Kate (knowing that you love the Daily Show), did you happen to see it? I haven't laughed that hard in days! Link

Author

kaust

Date

2004-09-03T09:22:45-06:00

ID

137127

Comment

Knol, haven't seen the Daily Show version of that. I've read some great stuff about Miller and his speech. He's the one who referred to the campaign and election process as the "democrats obsession with bringing down the president", or some such, right? It's truly terrifying that he sees the process of democracy as an attack on those in power. That said, I'm really happy to see so many republicans denouncing this type of rhetoric. I really wish the moderate republicans would work harder to take back their party from the radical right. I'd love to have the republicans be for small government again - instead of this freaky agenda where they care about who I marry and stuff. and maybe a dash of fiscal responsibility thrown in.

Author

kate

Date

2004-09-03T09:50:29-06:00

ID

137128

Comment

Lest we forget, throwbacks like Zell Miller are supposed to be speaking for "our values"óthat is, for all of us (white) southerners who, supposedly, go along with all that wink-wink racist crap and fearmongering they put out. This region has to get out from under this B.S.--which is used by corporate Republicans to get cheap votes so they can get in there and be fiscally irresponsible (but helpful to the very rich and to the oil industry and other corporate donors). Them putting Miller up there to play the southern strategy was one of the worst examples of it, and the most illuminating: This Republican Party is the old Dixiecrat Party (or, at least, its base is.) Miller says all the coded, angry stuff to get cheap votesóand then the administration distances itself. But Knol was right: The speeches were approved by the GOP. They knew exactly what they were doing, as they have from Willie Horton to their Swift-Boat smear campaign. Still, I think we're going into a period of this nasty stuff starting to backfire. People are starting to understand what the "southern strategy" is, and that it's nothing to be proud of. Good people in the Republican Party are going to face some tough choices, I believe, whether Bush wins or not. If he loses, the party will probably start splitting immediately. If he wins and then installs extremist justices and continues to dismantle American freedoms and rip apart the Constitution, moderate Republicans are going to start to see the light, especially as their constituents start to cry out about their freedoms being lost. I shudder to think how that period of time will be, if Bush wins without worry of being re-elected, and how long it'll take to reverse the economic, international and civil libertarian damage. Regardless, though, I truly believe it's up to southerners to quash the southern strategy and see it for what it is: the ultimate insult to us. The assumption that we haven't changed. A play to our worst instincts. A belief that we're too ignorant to see that we're being played. But, the greedy will continue using it for their gain until we stand up and say, "We are not what we used to be. Stop insulting us."

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2004-09-03T11:15:58-06:00

ID

137129

Comment

"This, too, shall pass" All parties go through cycles. The hardened neocons, religious right, and ideologue factions will cause the party to implode eventually. The Republicans of the last 10 years are where the Democrats were in the late 70s and 80s. In fact, it's obvious that the reaction is happening as we speak. If not now, then certainly by 2009, the Republican power brokers will likely be a reasonable sane group

Author

Philip

Date

2004-09-03T12:56:32-06:00

ID

137130

Comment

Sullivan mentions Zell Miller's "bald lies"; from Factcheck.org today: Sen. Zell Miller, the Georgia Democrat†who delivered the Republican National Convention's keynote address Sept. 1,†said†Kerry "opposed" weapons including the B-1, B-2, F-14, F-15, and Apache helicopters.†"This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our US Armed Forces?" Miller exclaimed.†"Armed with what? Spitballs?" Miller said "Americans need to know the facts" about Kerry's record, but his†applause-getting recital is a decade or so out of date. Kerry did oppose all the weapons Miller cited when he was a candidate for the Senate in 1984, and did vote against the B-2 bomber, Trident nuclear subs and "star wars" anti-missile system more than a decade ago. Kerry also voted†in three different years†against†the entire Pentagon budget. But†in his nearly 20 years in office Kerry's record has evolved. Kerry hasn't opposed an annual Pentagon appropriation since 1996. And he's voted for them far more often than against them. ... Miller did avoid some earlier Republican excesses, as when Miller's fellow Georgia senator, Republican Saxby Chambliss, told reporters on Feb. 21 in a Bush campaign conference call with reporters that Kerry had a "a 32-year history of voting to cut defense programs and cut defense systems." Since Kerry has only been in Congress for just under 20 years, the Chambliss statement was an impossibility. Republicans have also accused Kerry of voting against more mainstream weapons including the M-1 Abrams tank and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, but have been unable to cite any specific votes against those weapons. The best they can do is point to occasional votes Kerry cast against the entire Pentagon budget, which hardly constitutes opposition to any specific weapon. ... This isn't the only†misleading claim made at the Republican convention. Miller falsely claimed "Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations," when in fact Kerry has said no such thing. And†New York Gov. George Pataki made a similarly misleading statement Sept. 2†when he implied that Kerry would "just wait for the next attack" before using military force to defend the US. What†Kerry really said -- in his own acceptance speech -- is this: "I will never hesitate to use force when it is required.† Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security." That's the opposite of what Miller said Kerry "made clear." Read more

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2004-09-03T14:59:24-06:00

ID

137131

Comment

Syndney Schanberg in the Village Voice on Zell Miller's performance: Athe Democrats' convention a few weeks ago, Barack Obama, the keynote speaker, called for civility and restraint in our political discourse. At the just-ended Republican convention, Zell Miller, the GOP keynoter, called for bile, invective, and, well, hate. Political hate. Smear hate. We have seen nastiness at both parties' rallies beforeómany will remember Pat Buchanan's garbage-truckload of rhetoric at the 1992 Republican conventionóbut in my time, which goes back to FDR, I can remember no oratory sanctioned by a major party that was more obviously a hate speech than Zell Miller's. Senator Miller, a conservative Democrat from Georgia who recently threw his support to President George Bush, again and again smeared Democratic candidate John Kerry and his party's leadership as unpatriotic and therefore unfitóall the while insisting that he wasn't questioning anyone's patriotism, just "their judgment." His tone was brutal and sneering. "For more than 20 years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak, and more wobbly than any other national figure. . . . As a senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harm's way, far away." I realize politicians of all parties twist history every which way to their benefit, but wasn't it the Bush administration that sent the troops into Iraq without enough body armor or armor for the sides of their battle vehicles? Casualties rose as a result. Soldiers' parents went on the open market back home to buy state-of-the-art body vests with ceramic-plate reinforcement, and then shipped them to their sons and daughters in Iraq. Not until early this year did the Pentagon begin to fill the gap. No part of this failure had anything to do with a vote by Senator Kerry. At no time has President Bush admitted this failure or apologized to the troops. Planners make errors in all wars, but what kind of commander in chief (using a surrogate) blames those failures on others, in this case on the man running against him in an election? Perhaps not a very stand-up commander in chief. Back to Zell Miller's bitter speech, the tone-setter for political mastermind Karl Rove's convention production. Referring to Kerry and the Democrats, the Georgia senator said: "In their warped way of thinking, America is the problem, not the solution. They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy." And about Kerry personally, Miller asked: "This is the man who wants to be the commander in chief of our U.S. armed forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs? . . . Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations. Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. . . . This poli- tician wants to be leader of the free world. Free for how long?" That's the kind of fear-inducing rhetoric that dictators use to keep their opponents cowed and submissive. Unfortunately it's merely a ratcheted-up version of the message President George W. Bush has been regularly sending across this nation: If you don't support the war in Iraq, you're a bad American. If you view my tax cuts that favor the wealthy as reckless, you're a bad American. When he needs to have this message magnified to scare enough people into voting him a second term, he of course turns to pit-bull surrogates like Miller and Dick Cheney, his super-hawkish vice president. Cheney followed Zeller to the podium Wednesday night and his speech, though more muted, nonetheless carried the same message: If you vote for Democrat John Kerry, you're a weak American and you don't love your country enough. Full piece

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2004-09-08T12:37:36-06:00