Posted on 12/13/2002 3:59:31 PM PST by ewing
Edited on 04/29/2004 2:01:46 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
At least we can take solice from fact that Strom's birthday wasnt two months ago. If that had been the case we would have lost our majorities in both the House and Senate on November 5. Trent has to go before he does it again.
Stuff like Lott said is said all the time...and it was not a comment about segregation, by the way.
Hillary Clinton was just looking for an opening to weaken the majority leader right before Bush begins his powerful policy push in January.
This will backfire on Dems. They are about to lose even more popularity.
President Bush says it was a heartfelt apology and that he wants Trent Lott to remain as majority leader. He should know since I am now quite sure that he and Trent had a heart to heart.
You need to look carefully here. The ONLY ones who have raised the specter of him resigning from his Senate seat are his defenders.
The last thing those here who want him out of the Majority Leadership want is that...it would do nothing but empower Daschle, and is totally unneccessary.
After all, the Senate isn't going to expel him, and his constituents in MS sure aren't going to toss him from office for any of this. He'll probably win reelection with 70% of the vote.
Actually, it's "ham" not baloney -- or more appropriately, "pork." Did you see the press conference today? All Lott talked about was all the wonderful jobs he's brought to Mississippi so that blacks could have a decent job, etc. It bothers me that black Americans see the Republican Party as against them. Our beliefs mean a better shot at life for them. Lott's remarks have destroyed any credibility we were building with the black community.
Get a clue - Integrity counts. Having a voice in the black community counts. Lott has destroyed that. He's a gross embarrassment and should resign as majority leader. He does NOT represent the Republican Party's view of minorities. Nor does he represent mine. And if he represents yours, you should be embarrassed.
Because we have this strange thing where people get to decide who will represent them.
Now, if you got to decide who represented all 280 million Americans, you'd be happy.
But nobody else would be.
I can live with that. Allow all the Republican Senators including Talent, Coleman, Dole, Sununu, and Chambliss to have an opportunity to vote on Majority Leader. It was unusual for Lott to push his own re election up during the lame duck session.
Whatcha referring to?
No. That's how you see it. We'll have to wait and see how most Americans will see it.
Secondly, he is keeping a controvery going, that his enemies have stirred up out of next to nothing at all. As I posted a few minutes ago on another thread:
I am getting rather tired of feeling a need to post in Trent Lott threads. My feeling is that Lott has been too moderate, for too long. But to give credibility to attacks on him for praising the Conservative stalwart Strom Thurmond on his 100th birthday, is beyond absurd. It undermines the coming together of Conservatives, necessary for any of us to have much hope of advancing any of our agendas.
The Left has drummed this up, not because the public cares what anyone's historic sentiments may be. The public is interested in stands on issues on the table today--and many of them probably wish some of the 1948 issues were back on the table, but that also is beside the point. It is really only Conservatives, who care rather passionately about yesteryears' issues. It is in our Conservative nature. And the Left keeps trying to trigger a melt-down of Conservative ranks, by trying to stir up arguments over historic issues--what they see as our Achilles' heel. That is what all the hoopla over the Confederate flag is all about, also.
That Lott is falling all over himself to apologize for a harmless sentiment, is to his discredit. But to purge him while anything associated with this is going on, will not only tend to divide the Conservative base; it will be picked up by the media as a repudiation of Strom Thurmond, and those Thurmond brought into the Republican Party, when he switched in 1964 to support Barry Goldwater. Whether some of those calling for Senator Lott's scalp--in a frankly silly panic to humor a completely contrived outpouring--understand the point or not, you can be certain that the propagandists of the Left will exploit such a purging in precisely that manner.
The Left will also try to use this to prevent any reexamination of the assumptions underlying all American Social policy since the middle of the last Century--not just questions that involve race, but questions that involve the whole question of whether the rich exploit and hold down the poor, etc.. Many, who have uncritically accepted the Socialist rationalizations for the differences in human achievement, on America's college campuses in recent decades may not even be aware how deep the distortion of all issues involved, has actually been. But the racial assumptions of the Left are only one manifestation of a much broader and deeper concept--the fundamental idea that runs through every form of Socialism, including the Nazi, that you can remake mankind by remaking his socio-economic environment.
If you once realize that you cannot, you will understand the Achilles' Heel of the Left. It is to prevent that understanding, that they always scream, whenever anyone questions the interchangeability of human types, whether the issue is race, ethnicity, class, or whatever. It is the same underlying fallacy that underlies their immigration policy.
Republicans should have laughed off the attack on Lott. The correct answer was, "We are not going to apologize for a sentiment that a Senator expressed over an election that took place over 54 years ago. We will discuss any current issue. But we will leave anything over half a century past to the historians to argue over." That and a smiling reference to the fact that the Lott comment was a personal tribute to a well-loved Senator on his retirement, would have been sufficient. Apologetic arguments seldom fly. The Democrats understand this, I do not know why we do not.
On that last, I will cite just one clarion example. A couple of weeks before the Goldwater/Johnson election, the assistant on Johnson's staff who was the first one he saw in the morning and the last one he saw at night, was arrested in a D.C. area Men's Room--caught in a Homosexual Act. How did Johnson handle that? He never discussed it. It simply was treated as though it never had happened!!
Anyone who thinks that a statement in honor of a birthday "boy," to the effect of "Gee, wouldn't have been great for America if you had been elected President, 54 years ago," has the same potential legs as the story Johnson killed by simply ignoring it, doesn't begin to understand the capacity for scandal.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
I also wasn't alive yet when all this happened, so feel free to argue all you want about it, 'specially if u R a 'dim.
I wish we could all just drop this non-issue soon. I think it is a MUCH larger story that Al-Qaeda now has VX gas, and a tiny droplet no bigger than the width of a human hair will kill you in less than a minute. Your muscles will convulse and spasm violently until your spine snaps like a chicken-bone.
I will not leave over something I'm not.
Bush just came out with another statement of support.
If Lott chooses to have another vote of confidence, he can do that.
But, if he decides to stay, and Bush supports him, and his GOP counterparts support him, that's the end of it.
Took his beating -- that he did. But now he is behaving as a remorseful, guilty sort -- as though he indeed has a debt to pay. How effective as a conservative Republican will he be now that he feels he's got a tab to pick up and how big will it be?
The man had NO bite as a "Leader" before this debacle -- after watching him earlier, he's got nothing left in the tank down the line.
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