After his speech at the RNC, Zig Zag Zell Miller (he will be referred to as such during this article, because I do not want there to be even the smallest chance of my being mistaken for someone who doesn't have complete and utter contempt for that person) appeared on a news interview show and did what any rational human being would do during an interview with Chris Matthews on live, worldwide television: he challenged Chris Matthews to a duel. No kidding.
During the 2004 Election, Zig Zag Zell, then serving his first and only term as Senator from Georgia, made himself Bush*'s bitch. My apologies to those who take offense at that, but there's really no other word for it. He spearheaded a group called "Democrats for Bush*" -- which, as near as I can tell, was simply a group of phony right-wing idiots who wanted to show off their oxymoron-constructing skills. They certainly weren't Democrats. In any case, Zig Zag Zell was calling John Kerry an "authentic hero" two years previously, but then he changed his tune.
Zig Zag Zell suggested, in public, that we should stop investigating 9/11 immediately. Why? Because finding out why 3,000 people were killed so that we can make sure it doesn't happen again could "energize our enemies and demoralize our troops." I swear to God, those are his words. He said them at the same time he was putting all his weight behind the Republican party.
It's one thing for a Democrat to criticize another -- Zig Zag Zell wasn't the first, and he most certainly won't be the last. It's quite another for him to crib his stump speech from RNC talking points memos. He called Kerry an "out-of-touch, ultra-liberal from Taxachusetts."
His coup de grace as a true American traitor, however, came when he gave the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention. Bobby Kahn, chairman of the Georgia Democrats, remarked "Maybe I'll switch to the Republican Party so I can speak at the Democratic Convention and bash Bush*. It makes about as much sense." Republicans were positively giddy with joy over the fact that a Democrat was giving the keynote speech to endorse Bush*! Imagine! A Democrat!
It's already common knowledge that, regardless of what it says on his voter registration card, Zig Zag Zell is no Democrat. But on that Wednesday night at the RNC, Zig Zag Zell also proved that he was not particularly sane. Perhaps the most famous picture from the RNC, the one for which it will be most remembered, is this one:
That probably says it all. Never has such misinformation been delivered with such fervor, outside of a Pat Robertson tent revival. He suggested that opposing George W. Bush* in any way is tantamount to treason. He said that John Kerry would defend American with "spitballs." He listed a bunch of weapons systems that Kerry voted against, neglecting to mention that (a) most of them were from a single spending bill, and (b) Dick Cheney, at the time, was demanding even deeper cuts in defense spending by Congress. He lambasted Democrats for not calling the Iraq occupation a "liberation." (When he was later informed that Bush* himself had called the war an "occupation" several times, Zig Zag Zell said, "Well, I don't know about that.")
In short, he utterly stamped the politics of hope and unity into the ground, and he did so with clenched fists and bulging eyeballs. Mort Kondracke called it "demagoguery." Joe Klein said, "I don't think I've ever seen anything as angry and ugly." More than one pundit called it angry. John Harwood said that Zig Zag Zell "looked like a spouse at a divorce proceeding who says, 'Oh yeah, she's a child molester too!'"
After that speech, aside from the infamous duel-challenging on Hardball, came the frantic attempts on the part of the RNC to distance themselves from Miller. More than one actually went so far to say as, when they had called it the keynote address, they were only kidding. But by then, the damage was done -- both to the RNC, and to America.
To this day Zig Zag Zell is continuing the "rogue Democrat" bit for the sake of publicity. Personally I think he is just scared stiff of not having a legacy -- any legacy, even one of screwing America. On that score, at least, he can rest easy.