This story from today’s NYTimes, datelined West Virginia, says the president has been invoking Zell Miller on the campaign trail:

Campaigning here on Sunday, Mr. Bush invoked Mr. Miller’s support as a reason Democrats and independents could feel comfortable voting for the Republican ticket. Mr. Bush has used a version of the same line at every campaign stop he has made since the end of his convention on Thursday night, and here, as in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio in recent days, it brought rousing cheers from the audience.

Ha! Let me say, “Nanny-nanny, boo-boo” to the media nervous nellies who went on about how “angry” and “extreme” the Zell speech was, and how it’s going to cost Bush votes. I had a number of conversations in which I pointed out that they’ve got Zell all wrong, that that he was speaking directly to the old Reagan Democrats, and that the Bush people ought to put Zell out front in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Imagine that: Karl Rove is smarter than the media.

For what it’s worth, I talked to a relative down in Louisiana last night, and asked her if she’d seen the Zell speech. “No,” she said, “but at work the next day, that’s all anybody was talking about. Everybody loved it. It must have been great.”