why the instapundit has backed away

from Zell Miller

glenn and the boys sure did love them some Zell last night, until Zell started hitting the tv talk shows right after his lil speech.

apparently the spitballer is fine in a huge room of republicans reading from a tellyprompty, but when questioned he seems to crack at the edges and melts down.

witness:

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Judy, speaking of Zell Miller, he is here with us. Zell Miller, who delivered the keynote speech. We want to talk to you later. We’ll be speaking with Tad Divine, a senior Democratic strategist for the Democratic political ticket.

But Senator Miller, you have accused the Democratic presidential nominee of being a flip-flopper, but remember, as you pointed out yourself, 12-years-ago you were here endorsing Bill Clinton and going after the first President Bush. The Democrats are saying, you’ve become a flip-flopper.

SEN. ZELL MILLER (D), GEORGIA: They’ve said a lot of things worse than that. I don’t think I’ve ever used the term flip-flopper of John Kerry. I’ve talked about this atrocious record that he’s had for 20 years in the United States Senate. What a weak record it is on national defense and what a terrible record it is on raising taxes.

BLITZER: But as you well know, they’re been many times over the years, you’ve worked very closely with him and praised him. The Democrats are circulating information that as recently as three years ago, you were praising him.

SEN. ZELL MILLER (D), GEORGIA: That was before 9/11. That was along about maybe 2001, and I’d come to the Senate, been there for about five or six months. This man was a war hero, and I honor war heroes, and I honor John Kerry’s service.

JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Senator Miller, the Democrats are pointing out that John Kerry voted for 16 of 19 defense budgets that came through Congress while he was in the Senate, and many of these votes that you cited, Dick Cheney also voted against, that they were specific weapons systems.

MILLER: What I was talking about was a period of 19 years in the Senate. I’ve been in the Senate for four years. There’s quite a few years’ difference there. I have gotten documentation on every single one of those votes that I talked about here today. I’ve got more documentation here than the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library put together on that.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: You also were, I would say, almost indignant that anyone would possibly call America military occupiers, not liberators, on at least four occasions. President Bush has referred to the presence of American forces in Iraq as an occupation, and the question is: Are you not selectively choosing words to describe the same situation the president of the United States is describing?

MILLER: I don’t know if the president of the United States uses those words, but I know Senator Kennedy and Senator Kerry have used them on several occasions.

GREENFIELD: Yes. So has President Bush.

MILLER: Well, I don’t know about that.

BLITZER: You know that when the secretary — when the vice president was the secretary of defense he proposed cutting back on the B-2 Bomber, the F-14 Tomcat as well. I covered him at the Pentagon during those years when he was raising serious concerns about those two weapons systems.

MILLER: Look, the record is, as I stated, he voted against, he opposed all of those weapons systems. That, to me, I think shows the kind of priority he has as far as national defense.

Look, John Kerry came back from Vietnam as a young man unsure of whether America was a force for good or evil in the world. He still has that uncertainty about him.

WOODRUFF: You praised him…

GREENFIELD: Then why did you say in 2001 that he strengthened the military? You said that three years ago.

MILLER: Because that was the biographical sketch that they gave me. This young senator — not young senator, but new senator had come up there, and all I knew was that this man had won the Purple Heart three times and won the Silver Star and…

Look, I went back and researched the records, and I looked at these, and I — when I was putting that speech together, I wanted to make sure, whenever I sat down with people like you who would take these talking points from the Democrats and who also have covered politics for years, that I would know exactly what I was talking about, and we don’t have time to go through it on the air, but I can go through every one of those things that were mentioned about where he voted.

He voted against the B-1 Bomber…

BLITZER: A lot of…

MILLER: … on October the 15th, ’90, and on and on.

WOODRUFF: But do you simply reject the idea that Vice President Cheney, as Wolf said and as we know from the record, also voted against some of these systems?

MILLER: I don’t think Cheney voted against these.

BLITZER: No, but he opposed some of them when he was the defense secretary, and sometimes he was overruled by the Congress because he was concerned, he was worried that the defense of the United States could be better served by some other weapons systems, not specifically those. I’m specifically referring to the B-2 and the F-14 Tomcat.

MILLER: I’m talking about John Kerry’s record. I’ll let Dick Cheney, the vice president, answer those charges. He knows what happened in the Department of Defense years ago. I don’t know that.

But I do know, because I’ve looked it up and it’s there for everyone to see, that he voted against those positions as far as those weapons were concerned. He voted against all the weapons that really won the war against Communism, the Cold War and that are now winning the war on terror.

BLITZER: I know you have to move on because you have other things to do, but when you were speaking tonight — and correct me if I’m wrong — you seemed very angry.

MILLER: Me angry?

BLITZER: Yes, sir.

MILLER: No, no. I’m sorry if I gave that appearance. I was very…

BLITZER: But you — you seemed so angry that there are already some suggesting that the appearance could actually backfire from the cause that you’re promoting tonight…

MILLER: I’m sure probably some anchors are saying that.

BLITZER: … and the bottom line…

(LAUGHTER)

MILLER: That’s what anchors do.

BLITZER: The bottom line question is: Why are you still a Democrat?

MILLER: Because I was born a Democrat and because I was…

WOODRUFF: But other people change parties.

MILLER: Well, other people are not Zell Miller. I don’t change parties. I’m going to die a Democrat. I’m going up to the pearly gates, and I’m going to see my maker, and I’m going to see my mama and daddy, and I’m going to say I remained a Democrat, a conservative Democrat.

See, you talk about your voting for all these Republican things. I voted for the conservative proposals. If the Democrats had put any conservative proposals up there, I would have voted with them.

There’s nobody that welcomes a conservative Democrat in the party anymore. There’s no room for us.

BLITZER: Senator Zell Miller, thanks for spending a few moments with us.

MILLER: I know somebody that wrote a book about that.

BLITZER: All right.

WOODRUFF: We appreciate it.

Indeed.

more fucking less fighting + welch’s take on zell + zulieka

tony, you ignorant slut,

why do you hate america so much?

i have protected you, i have brought back the economy, i have rid iraq of saddam, and i even kept howard stern on the air

for your whining, ungrateful, uneducated, busriding, rum-drinking, slander-shucking black ass.

to be honest i dont find myself reading very much. but i do like pictures that you put on your blog and the other day i saw that picture you put up comparing my medals with senator kerry’s medals, and the colors were very pretty.

but why did you have to echo the daily kos and the democratic underground? you rip the instapundit for linking drudge and you link the DU?

FU!

and then you posted it on metafilter?

FU squared!

i dont care that the Air Force is now confirming that it’s true, that one of those medals i’m wearing in the picture is not mine.

you think anyone is gonna give a rats ass that i wore a medal that i didnt earn? they didnt care when i stole the election did they? they didnt give a fuck when i didnt find any wmd’s or osama.

they dont care about the deficit or my missing national guard records. they dont care about gas prices. they didnt care when i tried to stop the 9/11 committe from happening, they didnt care when i tried to make kissinger the head of the committe,

they didnt care when i redacted 28 pages from the first 9/11 report about the saudis and how they funded the terrorists, they didnt care that i tried to stop condi from testifying to the commission,

they didnt care when i refused to testify in public or alone

shit motherfucker they didnt care the other day when i said the war was unwinable and they really didnt give a fuck when i flip flopped the next day and said it was totally winable.

you know why glenn reynolds called the mainstream media “biased — and strongly in favor of a Democrat” yesterday in the wall street journal? not because they attack me and are always on my ass, no, thats a republican trait

he called them “lazy” because it’s true, they Are all a bunch of pot smoking hippies too unmotivated to get off their peace loving commie asses and challenge me on something. Anything.

i could snort a line of blow off oprahs fat ass on national tv and those slackers wouldnt say boo.

and if one of those mumbling homos did say anything i would just say blahblahblah and theyd shut the fuck up like the bitches they are and you know what: good. quit getting in the way of freedom, fucking longhairs.

every now and then someone will stand up and say what about gay marriage?

and im so tempted to say how the fuck could you listen to phish but instead i say blahblah and they sit back down like good little boys and girls.

i dont give press conferences tony not because im afraid i will fuck up, but because theyre so very dull and tedious and troublesome.

thats why theyre rarely televised. america fucking hates them too.

zell miller could teach you an awful lot, my friend. zell co-sponsored both of my tax cuts for the rich, swore not to run again for senate as a democrat,

and said he’d back me for president back in october of last year way back when there were still nine other democrats running for the nomination and howard dean was still in the lead.

he even went on the Sean Hannity show and called them “the naive nine” of whom he didnt trust any.

this was when he was out hawking his book knocking the democratic party, the one where he called the at-the-time front-running howard dean “shallow.”

well, after last night’s unbelievable speech, he got on chris matthews show and not only talked a good game but threatend to kick matthews’s ass like 3-4 times, ending it with wishing that he lived in the days where you could duel another man.

heres the video if you dont believe me.

which you never do.

and that hurts me a little, inside, too.

zell’s hurt me in the past. in march of 2002, just three years ago he introduced sen. kerry at dinner and called Kerry a great leader who “worked to strengthen our military, boost the economy and protect the environment.”

miller even called kerry “one of this nation’s authentic heroes.”

it’s a speech that i have politely asked him to remove from his official web site, but he refuses.

as you say, whatev, none of you pansies will care about this either.

nor will you care that in 1992 at a different convention, the democrat convention, miller was just as animated, just as earnest, and just as lively about how people should vote against my pappy, but for bill clinton.

it was during that speech that i said to myself, if only i could get a guy like that to speak for me one day.

well that day just came, funny man.

and now i get to do some speeching of my own.

i recommend that you do like americas newest favorite great grampa zell miller and get in line.

nothing the terrorists like better than loose lipped liberals making this great great country look soft and divided.

i call upon you tony pierce to stop hating on me and calling me retarded.

i call upon you to ask yourself if youre getting more hits today than you were four years ago.

and i call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers.

now watch me hit this drive.

incredibly the instapundit “changed channels” before zell challenged matthews to the duel and flipped back, therefore has no comment on the meltdown

+ jeff jarvis beats gorilla mask to a washingtonienne nude playboy pic

+ ken layne covers mccain on letterman

+ matt welch said of the miller moment “I found myself thinking that this was the most frightening political speech I had ever seen in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever been as uncomfortable at a political rally.