The following is a letter John Kerry ought to have sent last week to Zell Miller after Miller regaled the Republican National Convention with snarly, spiteful, angry and dishonest attacks on Kerry, made all the more enjoyable for the wildly cheering Republican delegates by the fact that Miller is a Democratic senator from Georgia.
Dear Zell:
Great job. You da man. Boy, did those lame brains fall for it. I haven’t had a strategy work so well since we charged our swift boats into the banks at those snipers.
How in the world did you get your face to compress like that? How did you get your eyes to glare so maniacally? For a minute there I thought you really had gone crazy and really did hate me. I didn’t know whether to cheer or take out a restraining order.
Teresa was getting real mad , and when I told her it was all a front, she said you and I could take our little political game and shove it. God, I love that woman. Did you see where she told those people in Arizona that she was glad to be in Nevada? Or was it the other way around? I wasn’t sure myself. All I know is that it was hot and that Bush wants to put all the nuclear waste in one or the other.
Anyway, I’d put you in for an Oscar if I could. Bobby Duvall couldn’t have done better.
It wasn’t only your evil style. It was your plainly demagogic and lying substance. I’m glad we didn’t vet your speech. I probably would have told you that you were being too obvious.
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant – that’s what it was for you to say that I want to outsource our defense to Paris.
First you kept the concept of outsourcing in the public eye, reminding people that Bush approves of our corporations sending all our jobs overseas to save a buck or two. Then you implicitly attacked both my patriotism and the very concept of international alliances. You left the door wide open for me to wax indignant on the former and to give the nation a little history lesson about the value of international alliances on the latter.
Then you jumped me for voting against all those weapons, knowing full well that I was voting not against weapons, but a bloated defense budget, one that George W.’s puppeteer, Dick Cheney, who was secretary of defense at the time, also was clearly on record wanting to cut.
And I can’t thank you enough for ridiculing me for calling us occupiers rather than liberators of Iraq. First of all, I don’t remember saying that. We’re researching it now. We’re thinking maybe you just flat made it up. If so, please let me know, and we’ll stop poring over all my speeches and interviews. But, yes, we already have found – as surely you knew we would – that Bush himself called us occupiers.
It’s like that time Cheney jumped me for saying America needs to be sensitive, apparently not knowing that George W. had said the same thing. Sometimes I wonder if Cheney’s not in cahoots with us, too.
Republicans need to learn that when you’re wearing your compassionate and moderate mask, you’d best not go trick-or-treating with conservative Southern Democrats.
As per our arrangement, you may now count on receiving whatever job or ambassadorship you want after I win this thing thanks in no small measure to your performance, and, of course, after you go through the final stage of this splendid charade and say you were wrong about me and apologize.
My best to the grandkids and those Labs, Woodrow and Gus.

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