Miller?s most striking success came when he provided new information on John Kerry?s dismal military voting record over two decades in the Senate. The Georgian pointed out that Kerry opposed the B-1 bomber, the B-2 bomber, the F-14A Tomcat, the modernized F-14D, the Apache helicopter, the F-15 Eagle, the Patriot missile, the Aegis air-defense cruiser, the strategic defense initiative, and the Trident missile.
Following this litany of anti-defense votes by Kerry, Miller asked rhetorically, ?This is a man who wants to be commander in chief of our U.S. armed forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs??
This is devastating stuff. It certainly hammers home the point that Harry Truman Democrats should cast their lot with George Bush, not John Kerry. Surprisingly, though, Miller did not mention the late Sen. Henry Jackson, a more recent pro-defense Democratic icon, and the John F. Kennedy tax cuts (Miller himself is a strong supporter of the Bush tax cuts). These oversights are striking as Scoop Jackson and the fiscally conservative JFK are much discussed in Miller?s book, A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat.
I interviewed Sen. Miller on the morning after his speech. I asked him about bringing over Democrats to Bush?s side. He said, ?Bush himself, who is a likeable person and sound on the issues, will get a lot of Democrats and independents from his own efforts and record.? But Miller will lend a hand; he will be traveling this weekend to battleground states in Ohio and Pennsylvania ?in order to change some minds and help people learn about Kerry?s record.?
But that still leaves an important set of tasks for President Bush. Literally, the whole world will be watching his convention speech Thursday night. In concrete terms, the president must take us through his thinking on Iraq, on the missing weapons of mass destruction, on linking Iraqi freedom and Saddam?s removal with homeland security and safety, on a second-term agenda for taxes, jobs, and the economy, on Social Security reform, on the unfinished items in health and education, and on the social issues of gay marriage, abortion, and stem-cell research.
Thus far, the convention has shown the GOP to be a big-tent party. But conservative voters still anchor this tent. The success of Bush?s reelection campaign may well rest on his ability to harvest a bigger crop of conservative votes.