http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/extra/Unleash Zell
We coach Little League in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. -- Barrack Obama, Democratic keynote speaker, July 27, 2004.
Today, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief....Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.-- Zell Miller, Republican keynote speaker, Sept. 1, 2004.
Somebody call Michelle Malkin -- there's been a deliberate shooting in the foot. But it's not John Kerry in 1969. Instead it's the usual suspect, the Republican Party. Democrats beat themselves up for not being as aggressive as their GOP rivals, and much of the time they're right. The Swift boat attacks on John Kerry seemed so ridiculous at first that the Kerry campaign ignored them -- until the damage was already done.
But there's a major downside to having an extra political Y-chromosome. Remember, the president's father, George H.W. Bush still had a fighting chance in 1992 before the party confab in Houston, where speakers like Pat Buchanan spoke of "religious war" before a dumbfounded prime-time audience. Now in 2004, after two days where good-cop Republicans like Rudy Giuliani and John McCain made the best-possible case for Bush II, someone condemned to repeat history made the fatal decision to unleash the hounds.
And it's clear that Zell Miller has gone from "Yellow Dog" Democrat to simply a barking-mad dog. But this dog won't hunt -- not with the moderate voters the GOP came to New York hoping to win back. We won't repeat the whole litany of half-truths and out-and-out slanders that came from the Democratic turncoat's mouth -- Kerry defending America with spitballs after ceding authority to France and the UN (at least he didn't mention black helicopters, though it probably crossed his mind). A number of others have already done that, including this story, and this one.
But we wonder how many votes Miller lost with his over-heated and angry sounding rhetoric -- capped off by losing his cool on "Hardball." Although the Swift Boat assault on Kerry was the height of cynical political (as opposed to moral) brilliance, Karl Rove has suddenly been wearing the emperor's new clothes in Madison Square Garden. There's been the blatant politizing of the 9/11 tragedy, the inscrutable Bush twins (Rove was caught so unawares he reportedly said whoever handled the speech belongs "on a slow boat to China") and now this Category 4 Zellstorm.
After Houston in 1992, Bush 41 actually went down in the polls. It could happen to Bush 43. After Ronald Reagan passed away earlier this year, there was so much talk -- some of it, frankly, overblown -- about his optimism. The pundits, in their futile bid to fill a week of air time, said back then that the party that could bottle that positive political spirit would win the 2004 election. Go back now, and compare Barrack Obama to Zell Miller.
Obama's glass is more than half-full. And this stale, warmed-over bottle of Miller is way past half-empty.
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