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If you had actually watched him on Meet The Russert, it's no such ploy. The man just makes no sense, he's senile and deluded and biased and contradicts himself left and right. Basically he's stuck in a La-La Land where it's forever 1980.
Russert just played him against the Republican critique/stereotype of Southern Old Democrats- out of touch with the present, flip-flopping, a pork barreller, still with some internalized racism, and incoherent on social/'morality' issues. Zell bopped around and managed to fit almost every bit of it voluntarily, with no sense at all that it might be a trap. You could read Russert's expression so easily- 'If I could give him a second shovel, he'd dig himself in so much deeper' and 'Sheesh, this guy makes shooting fish in a barrel seem challenging by comparison'.
It was patently embarrassing for Miller. The old joke is that interviews are contests where the politician is trying to take advantage of the journalist's gullibility and the journalist is trying to take advantage of the politician's garroulousness. Well, this one was so one sided it that Russert didn't have the heart to try any of the hard punches after about half way through. Miller was landing all the punches on himself.
And no, he wasn't sent on a mission. He just got senile and unadaptable with age, and like a lot of elderly folk who can't make sense of the new stuff anymore has become rejectionist/living in the past.
And if you ask Georgia Democrats, they are heavily DLC but don't consider him a Democrat. To them he's the senile, occasionally psychotic uncle that you keep/suffer in the house because no responsible nursing home will take him in.
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