Zell Miller’s keynote was the studliest political speech I have heard in a long time. The left and the media (but I repeat myself) are doing their best to turn it into Buchanan’s 1992 speech, calling it "divisive," etc. However, Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit notes the following very significant factoid:
The [Frank] Luntz swing-voter focus group loved Zell Miller’s speech. They liked it that he was a Democrat and an ex-Marine talking about national security. And the "spitballs" line did well.
I’ve heard constant negative adjectives used to describe the speech throughout the commentary last night and today. "Angry," "divisive," etc., etc., have been applied.
In attempting to be at least moderately objective, journalists might call the speech "impassioned" or other such, more correct and unbiased, comments. The other problem with the commentary is that it ignores the objective substance of what Miller was saying and the reaction it should provoke. Since Kerry did in fact vote against all of that defense spending essential to our national defense and used in many of our wars, isn’t that fact worthy of angering a speaker or citizen? I argue that they do.
Miller’s speech was not an angry diatribe with no substance that was issued forth as a matter of untrue politcal screed and invective. But, rather it was an honest indictment of someone’s record who would like very much to be our commander-in-chief. I thought it was a home run, in a different way that Arnold’s speech about American Founding principles of opportunity and freedom was.