The party of inclusion? Well sure if you are only including raving lunitics...

Remember when Howard Dean, for all his virtues and vices, destroyed his chance at the Democratic nomination because he gave a wild excited speech about moving his campaign forward from one state to the next and ended it with a whooping "Yeehah!" (exactly the sort of exclamation you would think mindless cowboy Bush supporters would enjoy)? Well then you haven't seen anything till you see last night's keynote address by Dixiecrat Zell Miller, Georgia's unelected Senator.

Giuliani offended, yet scared people. The Bush twins confused them, leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth. But Zell Miller will go down in the history of this campaign and the Republican Party. Zell Miller, with his rigid, angry face, blazed with years of frustration as his Dixiecrat vision of bigotry and stubborn pride became slowly eclipsed among the Democrats. Once a proud supporter of racial segregation, a man who lambasted LBJ for selling his soul to the “negroes,” Zell Miller now finds himself out of the Democratic Party mainstream. Oh, but he fits right into the new Republican Party. His speech last night was jammed with bald lies, straw men, and hateful rhetoric. Just when you think we can move past the old Southern stereotypes as tired as Miller himself, here comes an out-of-touch pretend Democrat to revive them for the entire world to see. Not smart, GOP.

The crazy ramblings didn't end on the stage. No, they continued well into the night on the cable news shows. On CNN, he was questioned from Wolf Blitzer, Judy Woodruff and Jeff Greenfield, (or the Axis of Easy), about why just three years ago he had introduced Kerry in Georgia as an American hero who had worked hard for our nation’s security (the speech was still up on Miller's website early this morning). Miller suggested he was new to the Senate at the time and basically didn’t know what he was talking about. Well I could have told him that.

And about those weapons system votes that Miller criticized Kerry for making over a decade ago. Wasn’t it true while as Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney raised similar doubts about those very same systems? Miller said he’d let Cheney answer that himself.

But that was just the warm up. Next it was over to Chris Matthews’ Hardball on MSNBC where Miller just lost it. Matthews asked Miller to defend his speech, and particularly his allegations that John Kerry voted "against" various defense appropriations. As both Matthews and Miller know, voting against a large appropriations bill doesn't necessarily mean that you disapprove of every part of the bill. Miller got progressively angrier as Matthews persisted in holding him to his statement, telling Matthews several times that he wished he was in the studio so he could "get up in your face."

As Miller steamed, Matthews asked him if he thought that he was helping the political discourse in the country, and then, whether he even thought he was helping the Republicans by what he was saying. At that point Miller’s meltdown peaked. He started waving his arms around, demanding Matthews "shut up" and let him answer the question. Miller then lapsed into a dialogue with himself wondering, “I don’t know why I even came on this program,” before returning to Matthews and announcing he wished they lived in a previous era because he would have "challenged you to a duel." He wishes he lived in a previous era for a lot of reasons. And that’s fine. Wish all you want. Let the Democrats handle the future.