ATLANTA, Ga. — The people who crowded Manuel's Tavern to watch Sen. Zell Miller deliver the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention behaved less like political activists than jilted lovers. Not content with groaning toward the television, they squeezed whoopee cushions. They shook their fists and sang, "Liar, liar, pants on fire!" They made fun of his rural accent.
But behind the beer-fueled gaiety of the "Give Zell Hell" party was a sense of deep injury. For years, Miller was the most popular Democratic political figure in Georgia and his portrait hung behind the bar at Manuel's, Atlanta's unofficial party headquarters. Wednesday night, after a nation of strangers watched Zell Miller, old friends and one-time supporters moved Miller's portrait to one of the bar's dark corners.
"I'm angry. I'm sad. I'm hurt. I'm disappointed," said 51-year-old Ralph Hill, who attended the party. "There's something going on in his deep core. I don't know what it is. I don't know if he knows what it is. I do know his mother is spinning in her grave."
Miller's repudiation of the Democratic Party comes as no surprise to anyone in Georgia; since 2000, when Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes appointed him to fill the seat of the late Republican Sen. Paul Coverdell, he has sided with President Bush on a growing list of issues. Last year Miller criticized the party in his book "A National Party No More: the Conscience of a Conservative Democrat."
A day after the speech, though, many Georgians were still struck by its stern, admonishing tone. It was an old-fashioned stemwinder, jarring in an age when politicians are warned against openly displaying anger, University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock said. But Bullock said there also might be Americans, Democrats and Republicans, who relate to Miller's tone of "righteous indignation."
"That anger seemed to resonate in the hall last night," he said. "The chattering classes don't think it is an appropriate emotion, but it does tap into what many women and men on the street may feel."
All morning Thursday, callers gushed over the speech to Neal Boortz, a libertarian talk radio host in Atlanta who said he was so transfixed by Miller's performance that he barely "drew three breaths the whole time." Miller drew still more attention as word filtered out about a heated exchange that took place after the speech, when he was interviewed by Chris Matthews on "Hardball." Toward the end of the interview, Miller lashed out at Matthews for interrupting him, and said, "I wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel."
