Zell Miller for President

Wow. Zell's speech, whether you liked it or not, was a blisteringly powerful, well-delivered speech.

I, for one, liked it. Hell, I loved it.

(if you didn't hear it, go out to NPR or CSPAN or some other news site and listen to the streaming audio. I taped it. I have it in MP3 format).

No mish-mash, mamsy-pamsy walking on eggshells. It was obviously heartfelt and passionate. He didn't resort to wild name-calling, and he based his arguments on facts. Those facts happened to come mostly from over 20 years of Senate voting records for John Kerry. Refreshing to hear something about John Kerry at either convention that didn't involve his Vietnam service. Chris Matthews of MSNBC argued after the speeches that Zell was "over the top", and that now he had seen two conventions about John Kerry... the Democratic one and the Republican one.

This is pretty unfair in two respects -- one, while last night was one night dedicated largely to John Kerry's record, this is a 4 day convention. And two, John Kerry's convention was not really so much about John Kerry as it was about John Kerry in Vietnam. Conspicuously missing from the Democratic convention was discussion of the years between Vietnam and his running for president.

So America wasn't going to hear it from the Democrats, Kerry left the door wide open for the Republicans to fill America in, and fill it in Zell Miller (ironically a Democrat, but not a happy one) and Dick Cheney did.

In short, Kerry's myopic focus on Vietnam in his convention is going to cost him this election. It might not have had it not been for his actions from 1971 until now.

Up to now, John Kerry's "positive" message hasn't been much of a message it all. It has been ambiguous and it sounds prohibitively expensive. It sounds like big government to the rescue, "fixing" stuff. Which I think as far as economics have shown over the years never fixes anything and often makes things worse... oh yeah, and permanently raises our taxes.

John's going to "create jobs", "give" us national healthcare, subject our foriegn policy to the UN, and fight a "more sensitive" war on terrorism.

He'll lay out that plan after he's elected. Great. Sounds like Bill Starbuck from "The Rainmaker". Snake oil anyone? It's good for what ails ya!

Kerry-ites (really mostly anti-Bush-ites) have and will cast this as "being negative". This sounds disingenuous coming from people with bumperstickers that say "Bush Lied" and "Mission NOTHING Accomplished" (with the word "Mission" crossed out). It's pretty hypocritcal coming from MoveOn.Org folks who ran the Bush/Hitler ads and questioned Bush's military record. And it's ludicrous coming from people who defend Michael Moore's "Farenheit 9/11" which is clearly a huge negative anti-Bush campaign commercial, not a documentary.

Of course, accusing a campaign of "being negative" is now also used as a negative indictment of that campaign.

So doesn't that mean whining about the others' "negativity" is negative campainging as well?

Indeed, the Left's campaign against Bush (oops, I mean for Kerry, sorry) has been driven by, as Zell Miller put it, "...manic obsession to bring this President down". It has not been about jobs, or about the war on terror, or its Iraq sub-issue, it has been about any and every possible negative interpretation of anything that this administration has done or can be tourturously tied to it by the most twisted conspiracy-theory logic.

When the Swifties came out, there was both thunderous objection to the Vets' ads and a deafening silence from the Left (especially from the Kerry campaign) about this nearly year-long drumbeat of negativity that helped Kerry to get up as high in the polls as he was in the first place.

When the tables were turned, it was "Ooh! Meanies! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! You're so negative!"

Whiners.

If you agree with me, and you know anyone who agrees with you on this who is thinking of NOT voting, see what you can do to get them to vote. Kerry must be kept out of the White House. Our cultural future, as well as our safety, is in the balance.