Democrat Sen. Miller: Bush, Unlike Kerry, Will 'Never Wobble'
Thursday, Oct. 7, 2004
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Democrat Sen. Zell Miller today issued a blistering indictment of his own party and its presidential nominee. President Bush, in contrast, “will never waver, never wobble, never get weak in the knees,” he said.
Miller noted that pundits had fretted he seemed angry when, as the keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention, he denounced Senate colleague John Kerry as a weakling. “How perceptive of them,” the Georgia Democrat said mockingly in a taped address at a luncheon sponsored by the Palm Beach Republican Club.
“I’m fed up to here,” he agreed, and then explained why.
Before 9/11, the previous administration had a “wimpy response” to a string of terrorist attacks, he said, such as the first attack on the World Trade Center, the bombing of the USS Cole and the mass-murdering assaults on two U.S. embassies in east Africa.
By failing to act, the Clinton White House sent terrorists “an engraved invitation” to attack America, he said.
Miller could not speak in person as scheduled because, unlike Kerry and John Edwards, he did not want to miss urgent votes in the Senate. Peggy Noonan spoke in his place, but he sent a videotape in which he elaborated on his support for Bush and opposition to his own party’s standard-bearer.
Robbing the Taxpayers
“John Kerry’s entire plan for the economy can be summed up in four words: tax, spend, redistribute income,” he said.
“Kerry believes that if you rob Peter to pay Paul, Paul will vote for you.”
He said that before Bush took office the economy was already slowing, but that the president’s tax relief had sparked 11 consecutive quarters of growth, that after the economic devastation caused by 9/11 about 1.7 million jobs had been added in recent months and that home ownership was at a record high.
A Question of Trust
Blasting Kerry as a man of no principles and no beliefs, Miller praised the president as a man of character and consistency.
“I like the fact that he’s the same man on Saturday night as he is on Sunday morning. He’s not a slick talker, but he’s a straight shooter,” said the retiring senator, author of "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat."
Bush is “the only man I trust to protect my family.”
The two nominees are “as different as night and day,” he said. “They are not made from the same substance.”
Kerry and Edwards voted for war in Iraq, he said, but they “were so scared of Howard Dean” during the Democrat primaries that they flip-flopped and voted against funding the troops they had helped put in harm’s way.
Kerry’s “biggest disgrace,” Miller said, was voting against body armor for the troops.
Reiterating his famous “spitballs” comment from his address at the convention, he said Kerry had voted in the Senate for 20 years against all the defense systems used to win the Cold War.
“This man wants to be the leader of the free world,” the Georgian scoffed. “Free for how long?”
Man on the Moon
Citing Kerry's votes for taxes, for partial-birth abortion, against parental notification, against Laci and Connor's Law, against defense and against protecting the flag from "being burned by a bunch of yahoos," Miller said, "A man's record is who he is."
He portrayed the Massachusetts Democrat as hopelessly elitist, so clueless he was “on the far side of the moon.”
Since he began voting for president in 1952, the Southerner said, he had never before seen “a presidential candidate so out of touch with the American people.”
Recalling the infamous fund-raiser that Whoopi Goldberg and other Hollywood haters threw for a delighted Kerry at Radio City Music Hall, Miller said disgustedly, “Talk about a deficit of decency in this country.”
Noting that Kerry had described the foulmouthed entertainers as “the heart and soul of America,” Miller said: “Not the America I live in. Not the America you live in.”
Speaking to the applauding crowd after the senator's taped address, Noonan quipped, "Think how far Zell Miller could have gone in life had he only had assertiveness training."
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