Clinton Bashes Conservtives Criticism of Lott, Says it is Hypocritical

CNN Exlclusive ^ | December 18, 2002 | Judy Woodruff and Robert Novak

[ewing]

Interview just aired live on CNN, CLinton says that the GOP has worked to supress black voters in Florida and therefore conservatives taking after Lott did not ring true.

And he was smiling, like Rush said Jesse Jackson was when he made similar comments faking outrage.

[ewing]

JFK?

[ewing]

Did Bubba really say that?

[ewing]

The person who I was watching it with commented on how big his nose looked.

[friendly]

Clinton was the worst President in the history of the United States, bar none: The most corrupt, the most dishonest, and a bone fide traitor.

Trent Lott's true crime was his refusal to let the facts out and convict this genuinely evil person.

Clinton is a typical crooked lawyer, verminously manipulative in every respect, a narcissistic sociopath, and utterly corrupt.

[geedee]

[jwalsh07]

Using that same logic, then Strom Thurmond is a racist and one that held powerful posts among his fellow REPUBLICANS.

Let's expand the logic to realms of inanity. Harry Truman was a racist with a segregationist background so anybody who didn't vote for Dewey in 48 or still supports Harry should be censured.

[ewing]

Agreed.

[geedee]

Here's one close for ya' . . .

[ewing]

No censure for Teddy Kennedy either!

[CounterCounterCulture]

Clinton's remarks provide more evidence that the leftists would rather keep Lott around as a tarred and subservient punching bag than risk having him replaced with an effective conservative.

Exactomundo! If they can't get him to leave the Senate, they'd loooove to keep him as the lightning rod for the GOP.

[RISU]

Who really gives a flying f....what he thinks?

[x]

Bubba has got his legacy. He will be known as the only former President to have won no dignity or respect whatsover.

[techcor]

Rush once showed a clip of Clinton cursing an aide at his first Easter party at the W.H. If he didn't use the "n-word" , he used ever other word. It had to be bleeped so much that it sounded like the Jerry Springer show.

[sox_the_cat]

I still like George Will's take on Clinton. To paraphrase he said something like he may not have been the worst president, but he was the worst human being to be president.

He doesn't have the common sense, grace or character to fade away into the sunset.

[jern]

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Former President Clinton said Wednesday it is "pretty hypocritical" of Republicans to criticize incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott for stating publicly what he said the GOP does "on the back roads every day."

"How do they think they got a majority in the South anyway?" Clinton told CNN outside a business luncheon he was attending. "I think what they are really upset about is that he made public their strategy."

He added: "They try to suppress black voting, they ran on the Confederate flag in Georgia and South Carolina, and from top to bottom the Republicans supported it."

Clinton's comments were strongly refuted by a Republican spokesman, who called on the former president to "check his facts."

Lott, a Mississippi Republican, has been fighting for his political life since he suggested that the United States would have been better off had it elected Strom Thurmond president on a segregationist ticket in 1948. Lott has since repeatedly apologized.

Many Republicans, including President Bush, have denounced Lott's comments, saying they don't reflect the party's spirit. Bush has called broadening the GOP's appeal to minorities one of his priorities.

Senate Republicans are to meet January 6 to discuss Lott's fate as the party's leader in the Senate.

Asked if Lott should be removed, Clinton said, "That's up to them, but I think they can't do it with a straight face."

The former president then said, "He just embarrassed them by saying in Washington what they do on the back roads every day."

He accused Republicans of "trying to run black voters away from the polls" in states such as Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida. Clinton also cited recent gubernatorial elections in Georgia and South Carolina, won by Republicans.

GOP spokesman cites minority outreach
Jim Dyke, press secretary for the Republican National Committee, disputed Clinton's characterization of the party's election gains.

"We worked hard to make sure that more people were registered to vote, more people went to the polls and more people voted for Republicans on Election Day. President Clinton should check his facts."

In Georgia, Democratic incumbent Roy Barnes was defeated by the GOP's Sonny Perdue, who promised voters a referendum on whether to return the Confederate emblem to a position of prominence on the state flag. In South Carolina, some political analysts have said Republican Mark Sanford's defeat of Gov. Jim Hodges could be attributed in part to Hodges' decision to remove the Confederate flag from atop the state capitol.

"I think the way the Republicans have treated Senator Lott is pretty hypocritical since right now their policy is, in my view, inimical to everything that this country stands for," Clinton said.

[OldFriend]

In case the grifter didn't notice. The people of Florida had a chance to speak during the past governor's election. They chose Jeb Bush........so this is nothing more than barbra streisand from the slimy one.

[Yankee]

Toni Morrison dubbed this a-hole the first "black president", but to me he'll always remain the "brown president", as in the color of excrement.

[Free the USA]

Why does anyone care what a impeached corrupt perjurer says, no one expects the truth to come out of his mouth.

[Pagey]

Clinton says that the GOP has worked to supress black voters in Florida

Another mindless/baseless comment from the Skunk.Hey Billy Jeff, did you know that your Vice Presidents handlers in Florida disallowed thousands of Military Votes from our overseas servicemen (and women) in the 2000 election? #42 remains such a smarmy worthless human.

[Paul Ross]

FYI, more selective news coverage:

Media Hypocrisy: Skip Clinton Praising a Segregationist

As noted above in item #2 today, the media are hypocritical in focusing on Trent Lott’s racially-polarizing comments while for years they rarely cared about current Democratic ties to the party’s recent segregationist one-party rule in the South. Yet that does not excuse Lott or make his comments not newsworthy.

But in a piece for National Review Online on Tuesday, Mark Levin provided an excellent case in point of the media’s hypocrisy in how they have ignored Bill Clinton’s praising of a racist, segregationist former Senator. In a moment eerily similar to Lott with Thurmond, at a 1993 birthday party for Fulbright, Clinton gushed: “The American political system produced this remarkable man, and my state did, and I'm real proud of it."

An excerpt from Levin’s December 10 piece, “Selective Moral Outrage: Looking beyond Trent Lott’s gaffe.” The excerpt:

On Tuesday, October 22, 2002, Bill Clinton traveled to Fayetteville, Arkansas to honor the life of the late Arkansas senator, J. William Fulbright by dedicating a seven-foot-tall bronze statue of the man....

Among other things, Clinton said, "If [Fulbright] were here today, I'm sure he would caution us not to be too utopian in our expectations, but rather utopian in our values and vision."

And back on May 5, 1993, in what the Washington Post characterized as a "...moving 88th birthday ceremony for former senator William Fulbright, President Clinton last night bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on the man he described as a visionary humanitarian, a steadfast supporter of the values of education, and 'my mentor.'" Clinton added, "It doesn't take long to live a life. He made the best of his, and helped us to have a better chance to make the best of ours...The American political system produced this remarkable man, and my state did, and I'm real proud of it."

Of course, the man Clinton was praising, who he called his "mentor," who supposedly embraced utopian values and made the world a better place for everyone, was also a rabid segregationist.

In 1956, Fulbright was one of 19 senators who issued a statement entitled the "Southern Manifesto." This document condemned the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Its signers stated, among other things, that "We commend the motives of those States which have declared the intention to resist forced integration by any lawful means."...

Fulbright later voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He voted against the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And he did so because he believed in separating the races -- in schools and other public places. He was a segregationist, heart and soul.

Now, given the turmoil surrounding Trent Lott's foolish statement last week about Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign, you'd think there would have been at least some outcry when Bill Clinton lionized Fulbright a mere six weeks ago, or when he awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993. But there was nothing in the Washington Post admonishing Clinton, which today published a scathing editorial against Lott. There was no criticism in the New York Times, which today is running a vicious column by Paul Krugman implying that Lott is an overt racist.

And while I'm on the subject, I don't remember some of the conservatives now voicing outrage at Lott holding Clinton to the same standard either in 1993 or October of this year.

But I'm not making excuses for Trent Lott. He should have apologized for his insensitive comments, and he did. Nor am I making excuses for Strom Thurmond's past. I'm questioning the hypocrisy of selective moral outrage by the Left.