Posted on 12/14/2002 10:47:02 AM PST by Sabertooth
Once again, in his own indelible words, the Republicans' Senate Majority Leader-elect:
"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."
~Trent Lott - December, 2002
When Strom Thurmond ran for President, he was a segregationist Dixiecrat spurred into revolt against the Democrats by Hubert Humphrey's Civil Rights plank in the '48 Democratic Party platform. Mississippi was one of four segregationist Southern States that voted for Thurmond. Segregation was the purpose and limited appeal of the Dixiecrats. It was the banner under which they marched.
The plainest sense of Lott's words are that he approves of the above.
Even though I don't believe that's what Lott meant, nor that he's a racist, that fact is inescapable. It takes backpedaling and damage control to escape the plain meaning of what Lott said and explain what's really in his heart. It's disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
The only way to for Trent Lott to address Thurmond's '48 campaign would have been to chart how far the retiring senior Senator from South Carolina has traveled in the last 54 years, and to use him as a metaphor to further illustrate how far the South and America have come. Had he done this, Lott could have simultaneously honored the Centenarian Senator and reiterated that Republicans, like the South and like America, have learned the errors of racism and segregation, and have long since embarked on a better path.
That Lott could not grasp this after decades in Washington is striking, particularly since this isn't the first time he's failed to navigate this reef. Speaking after a Thurmond speech for Ronald Reagan in 1980, then-Congressman Lott told the crowd: ""You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today."
Now, the Democrats are all over the opportunity Lott has injudiciously provided to them. That it seems unfair is irrelevant. He left himself open for the sucker punch and got pounded. He's only made matters worse with his tepid series of apologies: too little, too Lott. He is finished as a Senate Majority Leader of even mediocre effectiveness. It's time to cut our losses.
President Bush needs to invite Lott to the ranch in Crawford, and offer him a more artful and diplomatic rendering of the following:
"Senator, with your ill-advised remarks you've brought turmoil and embarrassment on yourself, the party, and the country. You've served all well in the past and I thank you for that service from the bottom of my heart. Unfortunately, the events of the past few weeks call for a reassessment of the nature of your future service. The horses have left the barn, but there does remain an open path for you, a path that is both honorable and humbling: step aside as Majority Leader and continue to serve in the Senate.
I understand the sacrifice my request places on you, and sympathize with it's burden, but our nation and our agenda are in peril.
I need you, and I'm asking you as you President to do this for the good of America."
Mine too...it's the only way.
Amen!
The cable networks all jumped late Thursday afternoon on a Time.com-posted story about how in the early 1960s Trent Lott was a leader of the effort at his fraternity’s national convention to not allow chapters to admit blacks as members, but lost in most of the reporting of the story was how it was hardly fresh news and that former CNN President Tom Johnson, who was on the same disreputable side as Lott, fed details of what occurred to Time’s Karen Tumulty.
SNIP
Lott’s activities, which Lott told Tumulty about in the mid-1980s but she did not write about until Thursday, occurred at the same time as Senator Ernest Hollings, a Democrat then as he is now, was as Governor of South Carolina using the full power of the state to block blacks from state universities, a time frame context Tumulty’s story did not note.
SNIP
Johnson, who voted on Lott's side, now calls that vote "one of the biggest mistakes of my life." Over the years, as Johnson became a media executive, word would get back to him from time to time that Lott was repeating the tale to mutual acquaintances -- to embarrass him, Johnson believes.
SNIP
Johnson recalls of Lott back then: "He was against integration. I was against splitting the fraternity. Yet my vote had the same impact and is subject to the same interpretation -- that I also opposed integration. I am very disappointed in myself. I hope my record for the past 40 years speaks louder than that."...
Occam's razor... we should slice and dice Trent "Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever" Lott with it.
Boy, I guess that tactic came back and bit Lott on the butt, didn't it.
If you're going to try and embarrass people about their past, it might be a good idea if you aren't guilty of the same embarrassing action.
LOL..indeed.
It's stacking up to be one of the most painful hours of television ever aired.
Can we hope that by then Lott won't be ML, and BET will lose interest in interviewing a mere committee chairman? ;-)
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