That would depend on which one of him is posting.
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."
That is a statement of supreme hubris. I don't mind being alone, or close to it, in some of my views here. I call them as I see them.
Oh so its wrong for us to infer motives from Lott's own words but you know the motives of those who critize him. Isnt that called hypocracy? Just curious. Have a good evening.
Sullivan is hard wiring. He doesn't feel a need to prove anything to anybody about how PC or un PC he is. In fact, in probably takes pleasure in being out of anyone's box as much as possible. He is an independent thinker, and calls them as he sees him, which is why I am sympatico with him. And he is a social liberal, except where he isn't. I like that too. The fact is that most mainstream conservative intellectual opinion has nothing but caustic things to say about Lott's comments, and amended comments, and just how long it took for Lott to finally utter the statement that he thought segregation was wrong, something he has probably never said before in his life.
Why should he say something is wrong that only exists today at the pleasure of blacks and democrats?
That would depend on which one of him is posting.
Ya know, you just rang quite true... I'm having an ever-tougher time believing 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."
...is the statement of a man who never held the belief the words convey, or perhaps doesn't harbor some affinity for their meaning still.
When there is an accounting done of why after 50 years of self-flagellation, 6 trillion bucks down the rat hole with blacks just as bad off as they were in 1948 then I may agree with you. There has to come a time when the mirror and responsibility is turned on those that have failed to take advantage of sincere attempts to right past wrongs.
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