CNN Crossfire transcipt, Dec 6, 2002
CARVILLE: When Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina celebrated his 100th birthday yesterday, one of the party guests was Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi. According to ABC News, Lott told everyone, "I want to say this about when Strom Thurmond ran for president. We voted for him. We were proud of it, and if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have all these problems all over these years either."
When Strom Thurmond ran for president it was 1948. It was because of a split within the Democratic Party on civil rights. President Harry Truman and the Democrats were for them; Strom Thurmond was against it. It was pretty ugly.
But to his credit, Strom Thurmond grew in wisdom and changed his views. It sounds like the same can't be said for other folks, Trent Lott, who has ties to a segregation-based organization. And I just want to know one thing, what is it about segregation that so fascinates you conservatives?
CARLSON: I must say, James, as you know, segregation was created and maintained by Democrats, by your heroes in your state.
(CROSSTALK)
CARVILLE: Strom Thurmond -- what is it that makes -- why do all of you conservatives like segregation? Why do you want to return to it?
CARLSON: I must say, James, as someone who grew up in a segregated place, as you did, that's just about...
CARVILLE: What is it about it that Trent Lott likes about segregation?
CARLSON: That's so dumb that I'm not even going to respond to it.
CARVILLE: No it's not. Why do conservatives like racial segregation? CARLSON: Look, pal, you're a little guilty because you grew up with segregation...
(CROSSTALK)
CARVILLE: I'm not guilty about the way I grew up. I don't feel guilty at all about the way I grew up.
CARLSON: You ought to be. All right.
*************** Also, jtill's comments reminded me that Mickey Klaus of Slate magazine had traced back the comments to Sidney Blumenthal. Here is what Klaus had to say.
Kausfiles has confirmed that Carville was, in fact, calling reporters the day after Lott's remarks. What Carney doesn't provide is evidence that Carville's efforts had much of an effect. Sidney Blumenthal's e-mails, on the other hand, appear to have actually provoked much of the liberal blog activity (see below) that in turn provoked the conservative blog activity that many credit with keeping the Lott pot boiling. ... It's entirely possible that once the mainstream press (in the form of WaPo's Edsall) reported on Lott's remarks a big backlash became inevitable. But if the blogs were a factor then Blumenthal's efforts were a factor. ... Many Republicans, apparently, thought he'd disappeared, not realizing that he's still out there, e-mailing away. ...
Let's concede that John Podhoretz and Instapundit (and WaPo and the NYT) are onto something when they credit the "blogosphere" with playing a large role in what looks to be the successful effort to dump Trent Lott after his Strom bomb. But they're all missing something -- a crucial link in the new post-blog ecology of scandal.
Lott's comments were first reported, as has been noted, on December 6th in ABC's ever-alert "Note." But "The Note" focused on the impact Lott's gaffe might have in the Louisiana runoff election the next day. It was a string of pro-Democrat bloggers -- Atrios, Josh Marshall, Tim Noah, to name three -- who immediately started whaling on Lott. (The conservative bloggers -- Sullivan, Frum, and Goldberg -- began pummeling Lott a day or two later).
Is it an accident that the Democratic bloggers all pounced on the Lott tidbit buried in "The Note"? Think that if you like! My instinct tells me there is a tenth planet at work here, a hidden force behind the blogosphere's rising influence. What is that force? E-mailers. People who send out tips and clips to bloggers, who in turn blog about them to the world.
And what highly active e-mailer was at work in this case? I think I know, and Podhoretz might be disturbed to learn his identity. His email address begins with the letters "sb ..." which Democratic insiders will immediately recognize as belonging to Sidney Blumenthal, the controversial journalist and former aide to President Bill Clinton.
Sid was definitely responsible, in part, for Noah's early pick-up of the Lott gaffe in Slate -- Slate editor Jacob Weisberg got a Sid mass e-mail that relayed the "Note" item, and Weisberg forwarded it to Noah. What about Marshall? "I don't disclose my sources," he told me this morning. A wise policy! But I smell Sid there too. The mysterious Atrios says (in response to my e-mail query), "I've never communicated with Blumenthal. The first I saw of it was on the Note." My guess is Sid is batting two for three here. Not bad. (That's assuming, of course, that Atrios isn't Blumenthal!)
**********************
And the National Review also had an article yesterday fingering James Carville. It looks like the Clinton war room is still up and running and practicing the politics of personal destruction (or whatever they call it, I can never keep the phrase straight.)
The Lott turmoil was entirely manufactured by Democratic operatives — namely by unrepentant Clintonite James Carville, who first made an issue of the remarks the same night on Crossfire — and then pushed the story behind the scenes wherever they could, explaining to pundits and politicians how this could be used to sock it to the GOP.
If Carville wins — if the bar for branding someone a racist is lowered to a single careless comment, an unreflective childhood in the south, and a belief in states' rights — that puts every Republican politician or nominee in a little more danger. It expands the media's definition of "extremism." Anyone whose voting record or ideology resembles that of "disgraced former Majority Leader Trent Lott" will be suspect — and vulnerable.