{"id":2461,"date":"2004-09-03T12:05:51","date_gmt":"2004-09-03T17:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2461.html"},"modified":"2004-09-03T12:05:51","modified_gmt":"2004-09-03T17:05:51","slug":"zell-miller-loses-his-mind-the-backlash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/zell-miller-loses-his-mind-the-backlash\/","title":{"rendered":"Zell Miller loses his mind &#8212; the backlash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Immediately after Zell Miller&#8217;s now-infamous keynote address on Wednesday, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ajc.com\/news\/content\/news\/election\/0904nation\/03gopzell.html\">Dick Cheney said<\/a>, &#8220;I&#8217;m glad Zell Miller is on our side.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That was then. The Republicans aren&#8217;t nearly as pleased about having Miller on their team today. Indeed, the GOP has gone from beaming pride for having a &#8220;Democrat&#8221; give their keynote address to &#8220;Zell who?&#8221; in record time. <\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, it took Zell Miller about three years ago completely sell out the Democratic Party, but it took the Republicans about one day to completely <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/5897622\/\">sell out Zell Miller<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>After gauging the harsh reaction from Democrats and Republicans alike to Sen. Zell Miller&#8217;s keynote address at the Republican National Convention, the Bush campaign &#8212; led by the first lady &#8212; backed away Thursday from Miller\u2019s savage attack on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, insisting that the estranged Democrat was speaking only for himself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh, <i>now<\/i> I get it. The man who was touted far and wide as the reigning hero of the convention, the loyal &#8220;Democrat&#8221; who had seen the GOP&#8217;s light, the veteran lawmaker who was given the great honor of delivering the party&#8217;s keynote address, he was speaking &#8220;only for himself&#8221; at the Republican National Convention.<\/p>\n<p>This is genuinely hilarious. It couldn&#8217;t have happened to a more deserving bunch.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThe evidence of the sell out was everywhere.<\/p>\n<p>First, when Laura Bush was asked about Miller&#8217;s speech, the First Lady said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know that we share [Miller&#8217;s] point of view.&#8221; She later described Miller&#8217;s viewpoint as &#8220;interesting.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Second, Miller was quickly uninvited from the convention&#8217;s VIP suite.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Late Thursday, Miller and his wife were removed from the list of dignitaries who would be sitting in the first family&#8217;s box during the president&#8217;s acceptance speech later in the evening.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Don&#8217;t worry, there&#8217;s a perfectly logical explanation.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said Miller was not in the box because the campaign had scheduled him to do too many television interviews.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But that doesn&#8217;t make any sense &#8212; there were no television interviews during Bush&#8217;s speech.<\/p>\n<p>Also yesterday, John McCain said Miller&#8217;s invective <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-mccain3sep03,1,5146607.story?coll=la-headlines-nation\">may cost Bush votes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>McCain (R-Ariz.) said the keynote address by Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) could prove as controversial as a speech by Pat Buchanan at the 1992 GOP convention in Houston.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think it backfires,&#8221; McCain said of Miller&#8217;s rhetorical assault on Kerry. He added that it &#8220;makes Buchanan&#8217;s speech \u2026 look milquetoast.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, to recap, Zell Miller has betrayed his Democratic friends and is a pariah in Dem circles. At the same time, he&#8217;s humiliated his Republican friends and will be persona non grata in GOP circles until after the election.<\/p>\n<p>A once proud and accomplished man has destroyed his own legacy. I don&#8217;t hate Zell Miller; I pity him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Immediately after Zell Miller&#8217;s now-infamous keynote address on Wednesday, Dick Cheney said, &#8220;I&#8217;m glad Zell Miller is on our side.&#8221; That was then. The Republicans aren&#8217;t nearly as pleased about having Miller on their team today. Indeed, the GOP has gone from beaming pride for having a &#8220;Democrat&#8221; give their keynote address to &#8220;Zell who?&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}