Over-Zellous!!!

Republican key note speaker Zell Miller:

"Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat's manic obsession to bring down our Commander in Chief...Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator

...In their warped way of thinking, America is the problem, not the solution. They don't believe there's any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy..."

Democratic key note speaker Barak Obama:

"The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states; red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states and have gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."

Notice a difference. I do.

I have never seen a more vitriolic speech given by any politician in my life. Never. Not Howard Dean, not Pat Buchanan, not anyone. Zell takes the cake. His tirade will go down in history, and mark my words will be remembered as the turning point in this campaign. I don't care what the immediate polls say, the Republicans unnerving malice and hatred directed at the patriotism of the Democratic party will backfire in a major way. You heard it here first.

Those are my feelings, here's what some of the pundits had to say about it,

Joe Klein:

"The whole week was double-ply, wall-to-wall ugly. The tone was set early on ... Allowances should be made for rhetorical excess ... But, even so, the Republican Party reached an unimaginably slouchy, and brazen, and constant, level of mendacity last week ... [President Bush] is in "campaign mode" now, which means mendacity doesn't matter, aggression is all and wall-to-wall ugly is the order of battle for the duration."

William Saletan:

"If the convention speeches are any guide, Republicans have run out of excuses for blowing the economy, blowing the surplus, and blowing our military resources and moral capital in the wrong country. So they're going after the patriotism of their opponents."

Howard Kurtz:

"What should the press do when a convention speaker stands up and hurls charges that are somewhere between exaggerated and false?

It's a party gathering, after all, and red-meat rhetoric is always on the menu...But isn't it part of the journalistic mission to provide a reality check?
(Speaking of that, the convention is three days old and I've heard almost nothing about improving the economy from the prime-time speakers. Does complaining make me an economic girlie man?)"

The American Prospect:

"So this is the convention that was going to be forward-looking and outline specific policies, huh? The only specific policy that emerged from Dick Cheney’s acceptance speech and Zell Miller’s keynote address last night was libel.
If Cheney’s slanders seem subdued, even by his normally Prozacked standards, that’s because Zell Miller’s rant was still echoing in the halls. The Bushes always contract out their hits, but I don’t think anyone had quite been prepared for Miller’s synthesis of Joe McCarthy and the Grand Inquisitor."

U-G-L-Y!!! UGLY!