TRENT LOTT AND A FEW GOOD REPUBLICANS

Trent Lott is fighting to save a career that has done little to help either his country or his party. As the GOP opposition leader to Clinton, he was ineffective; as a conservative, he has trumpeted politically impossible opinions while selling out on practical details like taxes and big-government programs. Even his manner and appearance are against him: a prissy, fresh-out-of-the-bandbox fraternity president with not a hair out of place. I say nothing against his character, which only friends and colleagues know (and some of them say he is petty and vindictive), but on the surface—and what else is politics but surface—he is the kind of man only the mother of an only child could love.

The GOP should never have allowed Trent Lott to rise to a leadership position, but now that he is the leader, the best thing Republicans can do is to stick to him. To the best of his abilities, Mr. Lott has been a good party man, and he has earned the loyalty of its other leaders. When he pretends that he never meant what he has said repeatedly—and reading from notes—they should pretend to believe him.

Politics is myth and the myth of a repentant Trent Lott will serve as well as any. If Democrats like John Lewis and James Carville can forgive Senator Lott, then so can Bill Bennett, Colin Powell, and President Bush. Indeed, a repentant Lott will be an obedient servant (as he has already declared himself) of the NAACP's leftist agenda. That should thrill Senator Daschle and the former Secretary of Education, who has been an outspoken advocate of the leftist agenda since he first entered the Reagan administration.

For moderate and conservative Republicans, on the other hand, the sacrifice of their Senate Majority Leader will be one more indication that the leaders of the GOP have jumped onto the revolutionary bandwagon with both feet and that they are prepared to betray their middle-class constituency at every turn.

When Secretary Powell declared that "There was nothing about the 1948 election or the Dixiecrat agenda that should have been acceptable in any way, to any American, at that time or any American now," he should be taken at his word. Powell must know (or he would not have spoken so categorically) that apart from Strom Thurmond's opposition to integration, his movement also took strong positions on states rights and limited government, positions that once defined the conservative movement. As Justin Raimondo will argue in the February Chronicles, the great champion of liberty and limited government, Murray Rothbard—whom no one in his right mind would call a racist—supported the Dixiecrats as the best alternative to Truman, who vowed to continue his predecessor's New Deal revolution, and Dewey, who promised to preserve it.

If anyone had any doubts about Trent Lott's lack of political understanding, this recent episode would convince him. A revolution has been going on in the United States, and the Senator from Mississippi still thinks he is living in the 1920's. The first phase of the revolution was largely economic and political—FDR's creation of a centralized high-tax state. The second phase was the social revolution designed to destroy the family (we call this feminism) and local control over community life (the civil rights movement). Overlapping and now outdistancing the social revolution has been the cultural revolution that teaches all Americans to despise the founders of the nation, its constitution and traditions, and the culture and civilization it inherited from several thousand years of European experience.

The vehicles for these revolutions have always been "oppressed minorities"—the poor, the female, the black and brown, the foreign, the morally exotic—whereas in fact the only beneficiaries have been a ruling class that owns more and more of the national wealth and controls more and more of the social, political, and cultural power. That ruling class still consists of post-Christian WASPS (like the Bushes and Clintons), but they are joined by ex-Catholic Sicilians and Latinos, African Americans who reject their heritage, and Jews who do not practice their religion.

Our friend and colleague Samuel Francis sometimes describes this revolutionary transformation of American life as a displacement of one hegemonic ethnic group and its values and traditions by another, but it is not African-American or female or Latino culture that is being enforced in government (and private) schools, but a generic and invented multi-cultural blend whose only common theme is hatred of all things Christian and all things Western. Multi-culuralism is as authentic as Kwanzaa and as destructive as collective farms. If there were no blacks, the revolutionaries would have to import Muslim immigrants—or Mongolians or Andaman Islanders—whose rights and culture would be championed and used as wrecking balls against the last surviving ruins of our classical and Christian inheritance.

Trent Lott has lived through the second two phases of this revolution, and he seems never to have noticed it. I remember the evil and imperfect world of Senator Lott's high school and college years, and I opposed my own state's Jim Crow laws, but the world we live in now is far more evil. Poor Lott, not to have noticed that the Baptists no longer enforce prohibition and Sunday blue laws or that the school systems of the nation teach their children to hate not only Strom Thurmond but also Thomas Jefferson.

I neither know nor care what Trent Lott thought about blacks when he was at the University of Mississippi, and if I were black I would not care what he thinks now. I would care about what he does and, in particular, what he does for me. If I were a race-baiting leftist fixer like Julian Bond or Jesse Jackson, I would want Lott to pander to my interests and to promise the government give-away programs that benefit me at the expense of all Americans, black and white. But if I were an ordinary, law-abiding, hard-working, Christian American of African descent, I would be looking for a politician who upholds the law and the Constitution (whether he likes you and your group or not) and who would dedicate himself to undoing the welfare state, constructed by leftist Democrats, that has made black urban communities a living hell.

If by their fruits we shall know them, then the Democratic architects of the Welfare State have the blood of millions of black Americans on their hands: the millions of victims of urban violence and drug addiction, the illegitimate children, neglected by their crackhead mothers, who find their only identity in a gang and never reach adulthood, the victims of divorce and promiscuity, the victims of resentments who refuse to better themselves in the belief that they would be rich and happy if only white people were not oppressing them. These are the fruits by which we shall judge Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King and Julian Bond and Jesse Jackson.

Trent Lott, for all his failings, has been in the rearguard of this revolution, and if his repeated praise of Strom Thurmond is any indication, an unwilling participant. Of course he is compromised and worthless now, but he should be allowed to see out his term in dignity, and his Republican colleagues should rally round him as if he were the corpse of a fallen comrade—though Trent Lott is no Sarpedon, much less a Hector. They need to show the American middle class, whose votes they rely on, that it is only the Democratic Party that is held hostage to Jesse Jackson and the NAACP. Race-baiting demagogues have delivered the African-American vote to the Republican Party, and the NAACP, in its ratings of Congressmen, flunks even the most liberal member of the GOP. They have made their narrow bed; now let them lie it—and only on the left side. If black politicians want to declare war on the GOP and its constituents, why should a Republican Party or a Republican president listen to them?

In the unlikely event Trent Lott should remain majority leader, I hope he will take swift revenge on turncoats like Senators Chafee, Nickles, and Inhofe, who have called for his resignation. Whatever happens, though, Republicans should read out of their party the leftist pundits like "Dr." Bennett and William Kristol, whose every political move is a blunder that panders to Democrats that will never vote for the Republican Party. Between the two of them, they have championed every leftist measure undertaken by Republicans (e.g., defending the rights of illegal aliens, promoting open immigration, strengthening the power of federal agencies like the Department of Education) and every hopeless political candidate—Dan Quayle, Steve Forbes, Colin Powell, and John McCain. Precisely because they are leftists, they cannot grasp the simple concept of personal loyalty.

The Republican Party will never be the conservative party, much less the party of the counter-revolution, but conservatives and Republican voters ought to able to count on people like Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott to drag their heels and, when they vote with the left, to show us they are holding their noses. Now is the time of all good men to come to the aid of their party.

Very good article, except it does not touch on Trent Lott's embrace of affirmative action.

. . . if I were an ordinary, law-abiding, hard-working, Christian American of African descent, I would be looking for a politician who upholds the law and the Constitution (whether he likes you and your group or not) and who would dedicate himself to undoing the welfare state, constructed by leftist Democrats, that has made black urban communities a living hell.

And how then would Trent Lott be the man to lead this effort, given Trent Lott's embrace of affirmative action, if the author was an ordinary, law-abiding, hard-working, Christian American of African descent?

And on that omission, I think the conclusion of the article is thrown into disarray.

I noticed that the author of the article asserts the GOP is not the party of conservatives, and that further, appears resigned and submissive to the notion of more government. Not that he likes the idea, rather, is resigned to it as a fait accompli. That strikes me as wimpy. But, very insightful observations, overall.

I guess implying Lott is homosexual is the latest in thing by the Rockford Institute and John Galt. To begin with you "real men" should read rintense's post below:

"Well, I can only tell you what should have happened to avoid this mess. The only reason this got reported was due to Adam Clymer, a liberal hack who hates Bush. I suspect Lott's remarks would have gone unnoticed, as many other completely stupid remarks by politicians do. That said, Lott should have apologized immediately after the news broke.

"President Bush should not have taken such a harsh and strict tone in his statement in Philly. Sure, he could have said what Lott said was wrong and all that other stuff, but there is a way to say it correctly. And in my opinion, it was done wrong. Bush should have mentioned Lott's long service, his record, and that he still considers Lott a friend. In a way, it was what Bush didn't say that was the most telling.

"Third, Lott should have NEVER gone on BET. It was nothing more than pandering. Everyone saw it, including the Black community.

"Fourth, the alleged WH leaks should have been stopped once and for all by Bush, himself, directly addressing all the questions Ari had been bombarded with. It would take just one simple statement from the President to stop it.

"Lastly, and most important, when this news story broke, every single Republican in the Senate and House should have come out in support of Lott. Condemn the words but not the man. Accept his apology and work to make things in the future better.

"But none of that happened. And in the past few weeks, the Republican Party has looked like a bunch of chickens running around with their heads cut off. Lott's remarks became nothing more than drum to beat for those republicans who view him as weak. And it makes me sick that not one Republican has even addressed the real issue here- the false stereotype that Republicans are racists. That is the calling that so many are missing. And all this Lott crap is just a dog and pony show of posturing and politics that only make us look completely inept.

"My solution? Let what happens in the Senate happen. If Lott is voted out, good. If Lott stays, good. It should be their call all the way. Bush should have never said anything about it, because no matter what anyone says, his comments brought him into this mess when he shouldn't have been involved at all. You don't jump in and play in one play and then go sit on the bench. Oh, and haven't you noticed how low-key the President has been since his Philly speech? It's a week before Christmas, and we've hardly seen or heard from him. It makes me very uncomfortable, and only affirms to me that the Republican Party has a major twist in their panties because they don't know how to deal with all this. Honestly, I think Bush needs Karen Hughes back. I do not like the influence that Rove is having." 16 posted on 12/20/2002 8:16 AM CST by rintense

If the Rockford Institute and John Galt want to know what real men think, I think rintense, a lady I presume, is the ideal place for them to start.

Now let us lock at the Rockford Institute, the sponsor of the author of this screed: Mission statement is: "The defense of the family;The promotion of liberty;The decentralization of political and economic life;The celebration of the literary and artistic inheritance of our civilization;The adherence to Truth, revealed through Scripture and tradition Can't argue with that.

Self-purported Influence Is: "The Rockford Institute is consistently credited by major media outlets - the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, GQ, the New Republic, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the National Journal (to name just a few) - with setting the terms of the national debate. Articles and opinions by Institute staff have appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Sunday Telegraph (London), the Spectator (London), the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Detroit News, and many other newspapers and periodicals around the globe. Institute staff have appeared on PBS, the BBC, CBS Nightly News, NBC News, the Today Show, ABC's World News Tonight and Nightline, CNN, C-SPAN, CBN's 700 Club, National Public Radio, Chicago Tonight, and numerous local and regional television and radio programs." They also puff up the fact they use Pat Buchanan regularly. I guess publicity is one of their goals.

Now go back to the article. If they are looking for nation-wide publicity, forget it. This article is crammed full of opinions lacking in inductive reasoning. The opinions one can share, but the scattered, cumbersome and clumsy writing is hard to explain. Maybe they just dictate things at the Rockford Institute.

One thing is clear. Personal attacks apparently are lead-ins for their articles. I would suggest the author goes to Senator Lott and tells him, "..you are prissy.." Looking at the author's picture at their website, leads me to believe he will fare poorly with Senator Lott being a Southern boy and all of that.

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