Posted on 12/16/2002 5:09:38 PM PST by Sabertooth
It's been an extraordinary week and a half since Mississippi Senator Trent Lott's unfortunate comments at a birthday centenary for retiring Senator Strom Thurmond. Initially unnoticed, Lott's homage to Thurmond's segregationist Dixiecrat Presidential run of 1948 have ignited an inferno of controversy with interesting consequences.
Even on Free Republic, there has been no predicting where individual posters would come down on the matter. Old factions are shattered, surprising alliances are suddenly in play. Yet it's all a mere ripple, indicating the undercurrents churning in the American public.
We are in the midst of a moment when Everything Is Changing.
If it's axiomatic that "we should be careful what we wish for, lest we get it," then corollary axiom strikes me:
"We should be careful denying our opponents what they wish for, for we may enjoy it more than they will."
If not every seeming victory of ours is worth winning, then not every seeming loss is worth resisting.
Such is the lost cause of Trent Lott's position as Republican Senate Majority Leader.
Stinging from losing the Senate, a few of the Democrats' usual suspects, Jesse Jackson and Al Gore, took a wild shot at the personal political destruction of Senator Lott. Aided by Lott's recklessly foolish statements and amateurish damage control, the Democrats have succeeded far beyond anyone's expectations.
Unfortunately for the race-baiters of the Left, Republicans from the grass roots to conservative commentators to George Bush have moved swiftly to repudiate Lott's offensive remarks, and even those defending him did so largely out of party loyalty. The fall from grace has been so sudden we haven't even heard the thud of the impact yet, and even many commentators on the Left are still reeling in surprise.
Lott will not have a second chance as Senate Majority Leader; it's all over but the lighting and the make-up. Yet he has stated that he will serve out his term as Senator until 2006, so Republican loss of the Senate is unlikely.
Despite sincere concerns in some conservative quarters that failure to defend Trent Lott is some monumental victory of Political Correctness, what have the Democrats gained?
Momentary turmoil, but no more.
They will now face a Republican Party that has moved swiftly to deal with a racial faux pas of one of its leaders. Can the Democrats say the same?
Senator Robert Byrd is the outgoing President Pro-Tempore of the Senate, and a former Klansman. If by some doubtful chance Trent Lott's flirtation with nostalgia for Dixiecrats leads to Democrat control of the Senate, Byrd would once again be President Pro-Tempore, and the highest Democrat in the Presidential line of succession, third in line to the Presidency after Vice-President Cheney and House Speaker Hastert.
The most likely case is that a Republican Leadership change in the Senate would not lead to its loss to the Democrats. Even so, Lott would no longer function as good ol' boy enabler, so who would shield Robert "Sheets" Byrd, or Fritz "Stars n Bars" Hollings, from scrutiny of their own racist pasts? Or the Clintons, for their slurs? Or Democrat complicity in the destruction of the Black family and the post-segregation institutionalization of a permanent Black underclass? The list is long and shameful.
This is not to say that the GOP won't have to go after the Democrats relentlessly and with more courage than they've mustered in the past, but with Lott's wings clipped, we will be in a better position than ever to mount the offensive.
The Republicans will also no longer have any excuse to take the Democrats' monopoly on the black vote for granted, nor any excuse to think that pretending to be somewhat like the Democrats as reflexive tax-and-spenders (but less) is going to hold much sway with Black voters. GOP pandering didn't work before Lott's escapade, so we can't buy our way out now. The Republicans actually have little lose going after the Black vote in this way, as it stands the are already lost to us. Only appeals of principle can turn this around for us.
Thanks to Trent Lott, the Party of Lincoln has little choice with Black voters but to start acting like… The Party of Lincoln.
When the truth is told, the evidence is overwhelming that Republican principles have done more to protect freedom for Black Americans than Democrat pandering ever has. That many Blacks don't already understand this is not the fault of the press, or the Democrats, it is primarily the Republicans' own sin of silence that keeps our record hidden.
The Democrats' "victory" over Senator Lott actually jeopardizes them more than it does the Republicans. Their politics of personal destruction has not worn well with the electorate. While the Clintons installed the permanent smear campaign from their war rooms, the Democrats have lost the Executive Branch and both chambers of the Legislative Branch in a span of eight years.
Will the Republicans' new Senate Majority Leader have an impact on all of this? Certainly, as will President Bush and his political vizier, Karl Rove. Yet there is one thing they can't change, but only turn to some degree of advantage:
Everything is changing, now.
Who would shield the Democrats? The usual suspects: Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN.
I fear that if Lott is removed as Majority Leader for malfeasance he will resign (like Livingston and Gingrich) as honor demands that he do.
In the current issue of Newsweek, he says otherwise.
Lott, for his part, distanced himself from the threat—even as aides still were making it on his behalf.
“My term runs through 2006,” he told NEWSWEEK. “I intend to serve it, whatever happens.”
MSNBC LINK
FR LINKKeep in mind, Gingrich and Livingston didn't risk turning over a chamber of the Legislative Branch to the Democrats.
The clout of those Democratic Party pr organs has been diminishing for a decade. Fox News, the internet, and talk radio are eroding their power.
But at the end of the day, nothing shields a Democrat like the silence of Republican pols.
Then, he should be allowed to resign from his leadership post, should he not? So that he retains his honor.
And you believe a racist?
Lott's already gone.
Now, the way to deal with bullies is to take the initiative, not fight a lost cause. Lott foolishly gave the Democrats the opening and he got his teeth kicked in. Nothing we can do will put his smile back together.
We need a new ML who can take the initiative. Trent Lott has permanently disqualified himself from being that man.
That's no doubt true, and many jumped on the "save Lott" bandwagon reflexively as well.
There are occasions when nothing is wrong with competing bandwagons.
Politicians have to accrue political capital to be effective. The degree to which long memories inclined many to not rally to Lott is the degree to which confidence in him was lost or never had.
How can a Majority Leader be effective when his party lacks sufficient confidence in him?
Is Lott a racist? Hardly. Is he a segregationist? Probably, as are probably the majority of black people, for segregationists of today are very different from the species of the 40's, 50's and 60's ... not wanting to be forced to live with white people 24/7/365 is a sentiment heard often when in discussion with upwardly mobile blacks, Hispanics, and orientals, and who can blame them?
White society looks too much like play, play, play, and the 'conservative' donation to culture in America is turning out to be more like benign neglect. Don't believe it? Think of which race has the greater statistical death rate from abortion on demand in America. If abortion is wrong --and it is more than that, it is evil slaughter of innocent Americans-- then why have we conservatives tolerated it for so long without massive civil disobedience? Black people saw that treating a particular race like second class citizens was contrary to our founding principles and did something overt about it! Would that we had done similarly over abortion on demand as it became slaughter on demand and democrats defended the indefensible.
In our modern era, benign segregationism is common to probably every race in America, because the democrat party has fostered racial identity emphasis as a means to divide and empower the socialist Democrat agenda, leading the racial minorities to accept that working together and schooling together is fine, but the races ought not mix in a rainbow of diversity. Sadly, we Republicans have spent little or no time calling these despotic bigotted democrats on their corrupt race baiting.
Trent Lott's situation is a case in point of our complacency: he reveals an unconscious tendency toward segregation lingering in his heart after decades trying in his own fumbling way to even the playing fields for all races; the race baiting democrats manipulate black people into filling their hearts with hate for something that actually didn't happen as characterized; the media, always willing to feed off of chaos and near riot emotions, pumps the 24/7 cycle with all things racist, forgetting to even ask Trent to what he inferred would have been better off had Strom won in 1948; the republican leadership in the Seante move like molasses in January to make tentative overtures with their wetted fingers in the wind, trying to see how little force will be necessary to counter this mischaracterization, while being characterized as a party of racists!
Want to talk about holding black people in contempt?... How hateful is it to exploit their touchiness on racism (brought along by constant democrat attention to reminding black people that without democrat handout systems, blacks couldn't make out --what bilge!) by characterizing a possible segregationist remark as blatant hate-filled racism, taking the most extreme approach to something only mildly stupid, for slipping his heart out into the open, then slime him as a racist for his segregationism tendencies and enlist the most racist black leaders to play the hate game for them, to carry their hateful water buckets filled with manufactured fuel for a funeral pyre? The RICO act ought to be invoked to stop these race baiting extrotionists, like Jackson and his racist son!
What if Trent Lott meant that the democrat party of today race baits and divides this nation in order to empower themselves and this might not have become so central to democrat methodology had Dixicrats succeeded in rising to significant power? Perhaps Trent feels that Johnson's welfare society, which denegrates black people by inferring they aren't able to compete in education, industry, professions, and politics, that 'great society', would never have arisen to re-enslave black people through the social redistribution system that pays people to be neglectful of their own talents and worth! Perhaps Senator Lott had something other than segregationism in mind when he opined that Strom becoming president might have made a difference in the way this nation could evolve, away from rampant socialism and toward self worth via achievement by utilizing more fully the wonderous diversity of a nation that united to crush evil dictators then offered a hand up to the vanquished nations rather than stomp on them.
Is a love of racial segregation what Trent Lott really meant to infer? We will never truly know because the democrat party chose to exploit his fumbling tribute, turning his ambiguous comments into some Hydian assault on racial equality. Should he resign or be replaced as Senate Leader? Of course! He can't fight the forceful battles looming over vital issues; he can't resist the Daschle obstructionism; he isn't fast enough on his feet to deal with layers of lies and hidden agendas of the despotic democrat party! Should he resign over his mouth fumbles indicating segregationism leanings? Of course not, but I will take whatever is offered to get this feckless buffoon out of the leadership position.
Do you believe Lott is a racist?
If not, why base your question on the assumption that he is?
Well said. Lott blindsided himself, the Democrats hardly had to lift a finger. Time and again he resisted opportunities to save himself as Majority Leader, now it's all over but the twitching.
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