Posted on 12/14/2002 10:40:58 AM PST by dogbyte12
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:10:42 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
December 14, 2002 -- Sen. Trent Lott still doesn't get it.
Yesterday he offered up yet another dose of contrition for the inanity he pronounced a week ago.
But it won't fly.
"I want to say this about my state," Lott said. "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."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
You're not a regular reader of the Post, are you?
Yeah, I guess you're right. That half-hour of piteous groveling yesterday, which included remaining stoic while one of Sharpton's goons heckled and peppered him with "When did you stop beating your wife"-type questions, AND his promise to submit himself to a full hour of hostility on BET, still isn't quite enough contrition and self-degradation.
Friend, I think I'm speaking for Lott if he was free to let his true feelings fly: KISS MY SOUTHERN ASS!!!
Geez Louise, you still don't get it, do you? Trent Lott is not being asked to resign for poor leadership; he is being asked to resign solely because of who he is!
Would you people quit nursing old grudges and think clearly here? We are more than an agenda, we're a people. And that, in this case, is being truer to "conservatism."
Actually, the smart ones -- Daschle, Hillary, the NYT -- aren't piling on. They know that the chances are that Lott can blackmail the GOP out of showing him the door. And they know that would be God's gift to the Democrats, long term. Gotta learn to think long range, think strategically. Dubya does. Hitlery does. But we have quite a few people around here who think emotions are tools of cognition. They aren't. Look at the fundamentals. Think 2004, think 2008. Think about the future of the country. How is saving Trent Lott from his own stupidity good for the future of the country? I know, I know: what more harm can he do? That's what they said about Clinton, and look how that turned out.
Hillary has shut up. Bill Clinton has stayed quiet. I think the democrats want this to peter out. They actually themselves will stop bringing it up... until summer 2004. Every urban radio station then will get ads about Lott. The vote total will rise. The othe group to be targeted will be the Oprah watching soccer moms. They will hold the balance in 2004. Convince enough of them that Trent Lott=Icky... Voting republican = Voting for Trent Lott, and the dems will pick up the Senate at a minimum and darn near the house.
Here's how my dream Lott speech would have gone:
"I grew up in a different age. I took my early opinions from the people around me, my parents, my schoolteachers, etc., whom I had no reason as a youth not to respect as my elders. Even in college [re the effort to keep blacks out of his frat] I had not yet become enlightened to the true nature of man and equality.
"Thank goodness I have long changed my youthful views, and I have worked consistently in public service to try and make America better for all people. (Bla bla..)
"However, I feel that my comments, as thoughtless as they were, may have embarrassed my President, my fellow Senators and Congressmen and women, and my party. Therefore, not to allow my party to ever have to hear from their detractors that we are a party who tolerates even slightly bigoted views, I heretofore call for a new vote among Senate Republicans for Majority Leader. I beg forgiveness from the President, from my colleagues, and most of all from the American people, whom I respect deeply and whom I am so sorry to have wronged. Bless you all."
He may not have had the leadership but he would have been respected deeply as a man who had a pair and who had grown in life.
I agree. It says that we can't win on our ideas and merits. We need to cower behind a weak leader to hang on to a shred of power. WE ARE BETTER THAN THAT. We will get the Senate back the RIGHT way, people!!
No, it's not the hypocrisy of the Liberals that's at work here. This is something new: scrutinizing trite words that are usually allowed to go with the wind after being spoken at birthday parties and other such occasions. A thousand worse things have been said somewhere by politicians since Lott remarks happened. It's a manufactured scandal from the getgo, I maintain. There is really nothing to see here, never was, and I refuse to allow the media and the Left's propagandists to dictate my priorities and concerns.
Far worse things were said by the New Jersey poet laureate one LeRoi Jones and he won't resign either! Far worse and far more consequential, because they are in a "poem" (really an agitprop piece) that is being reprinted and is being taught to our children!
Like the Bolsheviks in 1917 the American Left has little support in the society. But like the Bolsheviks, they Left has mastered the machineries of power, so that it can flex its muscle, dictate policies, cultural trends, contents of national debates. The best thing for the opposing side including Senator Lott to have done would have been to dismiss and ridicule the stage acted outrage and expose the scandal manufacturing process itself! Instead, we consent to act in an absurdist play that is being directed by the extreme Left with the outcome pretty much controlled by it!
Nonsense. Some of our best conservatives, morally and politically, come from the South. We as Republicans LOVE the South, of any color. You just can't open up your mouth, especially if you are in a position of leadership, especially in front of a MIKE ON TV, and say the kinds of things Lott said. No one can blame someone for the era in which he grew up. That's nonsense. It's what he does with his past TODAY that's important.
That's what I was fishing for: your concession that you don't care a whit about doing what's right. It's all political expedience.
You may think bowing to the bellowings of that noxious, pompadoured walrus whose anti-Semitism rivals Mein Kampf and sacrificing one of our own on bogus charges of "racism" is okay, so long as you it gets you ANWR drilling and a tax cut. I don't.
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