Posted on 09/03/2004 9:04:13 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
The heated exchange on Thursday took place at about 7:50pm EDT as the group sat in MSNBC's outdoor set up near Madison Square Garden. The MRC's Geoff Dickens took down the highlights:
Chris Matthews: "You know the old question in every political campaign is do you go hard or do you go soft? David Gergen. That fella just went hard. Was that smart?"
David Gergen: "He went hate, he didn't go hard. That was a speech, in contrast to Dick Cheney's speech which was well within the bounds of political discourse and it was a tough speech. And, and, and exactly what he should have delivered. Zell Miller's speech was a speech of hate, it was a speech of venom. This is a man who started his political career with Lester Maddox and last night he imitated Lester Maddox. Lester Maddox, as we all know, was a segregationist but he was a man of hate. Zell Miller is not a segregationist, not that at all."
Laura Ingraham jumped in: "Then why did you mention it David?"
Gergen: "Because I think-"
Ingraham: "Why are you mentioning that?"
Gergen: "Because I think he speaks in the tradition-"
Ingraham: "No you're mentioning because he's a Southern conservative and he came out there and he, he was angry-"
Gergen: "You, you-"
Ingraham: "No let me finish-"
Gergen: "Let me, oh, go ahead."
Ingraham: "Because this civil rights act stuff that's been mentioned over the last couple of nights. People in the South reject it. They think it's, it's, it's hinting that somebody might be racist. We saw it with Judge Charles Pickering, they tried to do that to him. Zell Miller had righteous anger last night. And righteous anger for a Democrat who was in Georgia, who governed Georgia as Lieutenant Governor, state party chairman and Governor of that state, came to Washington and the U.S. Senate and found a different Democrat Party. You better understand that the reason the Democrats have lost the South and lost the heartland is because they lost Zell Miller. That's the reason they're the minority party."
Gergen: "Listen Laura, listen Laura I grew up-"
Ingraham: "It's not-"
Gergen: "Have you had your peace?"
Matthews: "His turn."
Gergen: "I grew up in the South, I've seen the face of anger, I've seen the face of hatred and I'm telling you that's-"
Ingraham: "He's not a hateful man. You don't know Zell Miller."
Matthews: "One at a time. It's David's turn. We're gonna stopthis right now. Your turn, your turn."
Gergen: "Okay, I just want to say one thing. There are lines in politics and that speech went over the line. It's one thing as Dick Cheney did, I thought, well within the bounds of political discourse to go after John Kerry on his Senate record. It is quite another thing, in my judgment, to in effect come, he came very close to saying the Democrats were a treasonous party-"
Ingraham: "Where did he say that?
Matthews: "Let him finish, let him finish."
Gergen: "-and when people like Ann Coulter, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. When people like Ann Coulter publish a book called Treason and then they accuse the liberals because-" [Ingraham utters something inaudible.]
Matthews: "Let him finish!"
Ingraham: "Chris?!"
Gergen: "Well we can be, we can be...the, it seems to me that when you go after the Democratic Party as the party that essentially has this manic obsession to pull down your Commander-in-Chief when there is a legitimate argument in this country about whether we should have gone to Iraq or not. When there are legitimate questions on one side or the other it seems to me that those kinds of questions, especially for someone who only a year-and-a-half ago praised John Kerry. Especially for someone who said he's, he's strong."
Ingraham: "How come-"
Matthews: "Okay."
Ingraham: "Chris."
Matthews: "It just seems, it seems to me that there are lines and he went over the line and I think it was in the tradition of Lester Maddox without the segregation."
Matthews: "Your turn."
Ingraham: "I gotta tell you. When Ted Kennedy gave a speech at the Democratic Convention and referred to ‘George the Monarch,' when we heard Jimmy Carter say, ‘Well at least John Kerry showed up,' I don't recall the panel on Hardball referring to those moments as hateful moments."
Ron Reagan: "Well they weren't as hateful as what we heard last night."
Ingraham: "Zell Miller, Zell Miller is not a hateful man. Zell Miller has proudly served the state of Georgia, is enormously popular. He gave a tough speech but a tough speech in politics is sometimes required and a tough speech he gave. The base of the party and most Republicans that I have talked to thought that anger, which was righteous anger, was deserved. And I think we should be very careful about the lines we cross in what we tell, how we characterize speeches."
Gergen: "But Laura for some people that was, it rallied the base. I have no, I understand that."
Ingraham: "He's a, he's a nice person."
Gergen: "But for a lot of people out there it was scary. The word I heard from a lot of-"
Ingraham: "Well I'm scared of Al Sharpton."
Gergen: "I understand. And the Al Sharpton speech went over the line too. That was a speech, that was also a speech of hate."
Ingraham: "People weren't dissecting it though, right?"
Gergen: "They didn't put him on as their opening keynote speaker at 10 o'clock."
Ingraham: "Zell Miller's speech was a barnburner. One of the most important political speeches of the last year."
Gergen: "They deserve whatever they get from it."
Matthews soon wondered: "It's always tricky how far you go back with someone's record. Is it fair to go back, David, go all the way back to his record of having opposed the civil rights and voting rights act. Is that too far to go back to judge a southerner today?"
Gergen: "I do think a lot of southerners do change their mind and Zell Miller was a good Governor of Georgia. I don't take a word, I don't take a whit away from him. He was a very good, innovative governor of Georgia. He has done a lot of good things. He served his country well as a Marine. But all of those things do not allow you, do not give you permission to go out and give a speech in which you basically accuse the other side of being nearly traitorous. It does not give you permission to say whatever the hell you like."
Ingraham interjected: "Well you know something? When Bob Byrd was a member of the KKK and when he gives anti-war speeches on the Senate floor he's praised as a man of fiery passion. That's, that's fine. But Bob Byrd gets a pass for the KKK and somehow Zell Miller is still bleeding for voting against the 1964 civil rights act. I wish we had the same indignation toward, toward both things."
Well, he couldn't have voted against the 1964 bill since he wasn't in the Senate back then, but Ingraham's point about hypocrisy stands.
You can link to entire story on FR. I have cut the summary that precedes the story and links to prior MRC's Zell Miller Cyber Alerts in order to shorten a lengthy piece. I guess I could have cut Ron Reagan as well as he just filled an empty chair.
Gergen didn't RECALL ... he was spoon fed this filth to spew by one of the most pathetic presidential campaigns I've ever seen (the KERRY campaign)
IMHO she's TWICE the babe Coulter is.
(ducks, runs for cover)
Exactly. That sort of "character assassination by insinuation" is used all the time by the lamestream media.
Exactly. That sort of "character assassination by insinuation" is used all the time by the lamestream media.
"But Bob Byrd gets a pass for the KKK and somehow Zell Miller is still bleeding for voting against the 1964 civil rights act." Sorry, but Zell was not in Congress in 1964 so he could not vote for or against the Civil Rights Act. That is a VERY easy fact to check.
Gergen is a WUSSY.... If he had the balls of Zell Miller
he would be more believable... His Clintonian analysis is
getting old....He has never, In the mag..USNews..or the
half-ass talk shows given any credit to the aggressive
leadership of President Bush. In fact - he is more a
lamb and leans more to the - let-live - politicians who
don't want to rock the boat (Kerry's boat)..that is ?? Jake
They can dish it out but they can't take it. In 1992 Zell Miller's speech was full of passion for populist reform when he stumped for the "moderate" Clinton. Now it's a hate speech. Give me a break. The Democratic Party and the left in general are so thin-skinned and hypocritical it's comical. Monsieur Kerry whined about Republicans questioning his patriotism in his rebuttal last night. Another non-sequitir from the Kerry camp which is growing tiresome, as is everything they do.
he came very close to saying the Democrats were a treasonous party-"
I'll Say it.
Lester Maddox wasn't hate-filled.
Nor Zell Miller.
He Simply told the truth and they thought is was hate.
Of John Kerry: "You can't make a chicken swim, and you can't make John Kerry anything but an out-of-touch ultraliberal from Taxachussetts." National Democrats are "being cannibalized, eaten alive by the special-interest groups with their single-issue constituents who care about their own narrow agenda."
Labeling opinions they disagree with as hate is the left wing's MO to silence dissent. From homosexuals to affirmative action to immigration they do it time after time after time.
My form of hate is better than yours! Neener, neener, neener! How gay is that?
Tell that to chris mathews. He's the one who brought it up, not Laura.
Lester Maddox might not have been "hate filled", but he was certainly a jerk.
Gergan is a hate-filled twit.
A butter wouldn't melt in his mouth kind of guy, who would stab a person in the back, but never in the chest.
Seems the lefties are becoming disjointed rather early in this campaign sequel.
They may well implode prior to the election, causing them to seek refuge at that meeting of the daft they have in Hilton Head.
This way they can heal up and be able to chastise the American voters for re-electing GWB in November.
All these attempts to spin Miller's speech into some sort of hate diatribe are so lame. Either it repelled people or it didn't. The fact that these losers are trying to convince people that they should have been repelled shows that they weren't.
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