Zell Miller’s Speech

I didn’t see it last night, but apparently it was quite something. Here are some of the media’s comments about it, as relayed by Howard Kurtz:

“I wonder if it was smart to have him out there in such a hot fashion,” said George Stephanopoulos.

“He looked angry,” said Mara Liasson.

“Miller went over the line into demagoguery,” said Mort Kondracke, by accusing the Dems of defaming American troops.

He really got kicked around on CNN. “I’ve never heard such an angry speech,” said Bill Schneider — even angrier, he said, than Pat Buchanan’s “culture war” address in ’92.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as angry and ugly as Miller’s speech,” said Joe Klein.

The Wall Street Journal’s John Harwood said Miller “looked like a spouse at a divorce proceeding who says, ‘Oh yeah, she’s a child molester too.’ ”

The New York Times called it “a memorably brutal attack on Mr. Kerry and the Democratic Party.”

I’m not unhappy that I missed it, to be honest. But I wonder what undecided Americans will think after seeing such a speech at the RNC. I hope that they’ll agree with these comments by conservative writer and blogger Andrew Sullivan:

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.

…Last night was therefore a revealing night for me. I watched a Democrat at a GOP Convention convince me that I could never be a Republican. If they wheel out lying, angry old men like this as their keynote, I’ll take Obama. Any day.

Kash