That's your favorable spin on it. But what Lott actually said, unfiltered, uninterpreted, was this:
I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
Had Senator Lott, whose profession requires that he understand the specific meaning of words (he is a legislator, you know) referred to a specific, recorded historical event: The casting of electoral votes to the Dixiecrat Party in the 1948 election. And he gave what looks to me like an endorsement of that party. We'd have been better off, he appears to say. Spin all you want. But I am looking at what he actually said.
He did not endorse all of Thurmond's views. He simply stated the US would have avoided many problems with Strom as President.
You want to generalize it; But Lott did not. He didn't say he personally thought Thurmond would be a "good leader." He said that in 1948 Mississippi voted for Thurmond and that'd we'd have been better off if he'd won. It makes sense to me to see what the platform was that he ran on.
Time to move on and focus on the real enemies.
Yeah, yeah. Nothing to see here. Move along. No sale, friend. In order to effectively defeat our enemies, we need effective leadership. And IMO, having a Senate leader who appears to endorse the Dixiecrat party of 1948 is not effective leadership. We shall see if this is much ado about nothing or not. Take care.
The Chicago Tribune is all over this in this morning's edition. At least it didn't end up on the front page.