Inside Politics

Praise for Zell

Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman, who served as President Bush’s campaign manager last year, says that Democrats and the press completely misread the power of the blistering keynote speech given by Sen. Zell Miller, Georgia Democrat, at the Republican convention.

“Zell Miller got a better reception than George W. Bush did” when they campaigned together, Mr. Mehlman said at a forum with John Kerry’s campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, moderated by former President George Bush at his library in Texas.

“You saw, when [Mr. Miller] spoke, someone who was unbelievably sincere. You might not agree with him, but you saw someone who believed what he was saying,” Mr. Mehlman said.

That prompted the elder Mr. Bush to recall that the Georgia Democrat also spoke at the 1992 Democratic convention, the New York Times reports.

“Could I editorialize here about Zell Miller, who I like, but who gave the Democratic keynote speech knocking the socks off of me?” Mr. Bush said. “He was not, by definition, my favorite guy. But he is now.”

Abortion anchor

“Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has given a speech on abortion that is befuddling the political class. Did she, in her speech Monday to abortion-rights supporters, say what she’s always said on abortion, or something new?” Terry Eastland writes at the Weekly Standard Web site (www.weeklystandard.com).

“Clinton affirmed her long-standing support for abortion rights, as declared in Roe v. Wade. But ‘then she quickly shifted gears,’ the New York Times declared in a front-page story, ‘offering warm words to opponents of legalized abortion and praising the influence of “religious and moral values” on delaying teenage girls from becoming sexually active.’

“A day later a Clinton aide told reporters that the senator had said nothing new and that the speech didn’t merit A-1 coverage. So the Times was wrong to see the speech as an effort to reach out ‘beyond traditional core Democrats who support abortion rights’ — or was it?

“This much is clear: It would have been front-page news everywhere if Clinton had said that it’s time for her party to quit defending Roe v. Wade,” Mr. Eastland said.

“That would have been heresy to ‘traditional core Democrats,’ of course, but the truth is that the Democrats’ fierce attachment to Roe is a big reason for the party’s gradual decline. …

“As abortion-rights supporter Benjamin Wittes writes in the current Atlantic Monthly, Roe had ‘a deep legitimacy problem.’ But soon the Democratic Party swore allegiance to just such a decision. That meant as well a commitment to its disenfranchising effects, since Roe mandated policy. The party came to shut down dissent (recall that Robert Casey, the pro-life Pennsylvania governor, was barred from speaking at the Democratic National Convention in 1992) even as it advanced ever more strident defenses of Roe (no ‘warm words’ for pro-lifers).”

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