Turning a Corner?-Lott Supporters Now Say They Are 'Approaching' 26 GOP Votes for Lott

National Review Magazine ^ | December 19, 2002 | Byorn York

[ewing]

Sources on Capitol Hill say that Incoming Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi has collected assurances from more than 20 Republican Senators that they will support him in a new election to determine whether Lott will remain as Senate Majority Leader.

'We have got well over 20 and are approaching 26,' says one Lott supporter.

Twenty Six votes ( out of 51 total GOP members) are required for Lott to keep his job.

[beckett]

Your analysis of this situation could not possibly be more wrong. To associate the Republican Party --- the party of Lincoln --- with the odious obscenity of the Dixiecrat platform of 1948, which Lott did merely my mentioning that election while he served as a national leader of the Republican Party, is a major blunder which very rightly should cost him his political head.

[savedbygrace]

The thing is, he's the only announced candidate for the position and he's still way short of a majority. And it's a secret ballot, so they can tell him what he wants to hear, then vote whichever way they want come Jan 6.

[Robert_Paulson2]

baloney... get over it.
Lott is no racist. Just being nice to an old man and opened his mouth too wide. The racist crap is too much.

You sound like a moderate republican at best. Former democrat?

[Smogger]

Sacrificing lott to placate them will not satiate them. It will feed their notion that they can cripple us by racially demonizing their targets. It is apparently working with you.

Lott racially demonized and sacraficed himself.

[grania]

And if Lott goes, the GOP will be portrayed as the party which dumped a leader once he developed a greater understanding of race-related concerns.

You asked what I meant by "greater understanding" in this sentence. What I meant is that's what the Democrats can say...that Senator Lott has spoken to them, been on BET, gotten a real earful about why what he said was offensive to them. And, after Lott makes that journey, the Republicans are going to dump him? If it happens, the libs are going to be able to use that to "prove" that the Republicans will not accept tolerance.

The Bush team should've thought this one through. I don't know who's going to win and who's going to lose this high-stakes game. All I'm saying is that I'm impressed that Senator Lott didn't fold. Now, if we could just get to the promised PBA ban...

[aristeides]

You sound like a moderate republican at best. Former democrat?

Hey, I'm a former Democrat too. Not all of us are moralizing scolds without any sense of humor or any scrap of mercy.

[gridlock]

The Democrats have planted the seed about Lott. They want him damaged, but to remain in place. They are going to make him the poster boy for the racist Republican Party. So Lanny Davis, George McGovern, and a host of other Democrats are going to come out with some formulation of, "While I don't agree with what he said, he should be allowed to stay". The only way the Democrats lose this issue is if the Republicans do the right thing and sack Lott as SML.

Unfair as it is, a lot of people strongly suspect that the Republican Party is racist. The failure to remove Lott as SML will only confirm that suspicion.

Why would it be so wrong to do the right thing here? Just because Democrats are calling for Lott's head does not mean that they do not have a point. Lott's comments in support of the segregationist Dixiecrat platform should be an anathema to any Republican. Why shouldn't Lott be sacked as a result?

[Smogger]

It really isn't good precedence to take things said to flatter a colleague at his 100th birthday party and use it out of context to destroy him.

Stupid, divisive comments spoken aloud on national television. A bachelor party is hardly a good analogy.

[aristeides]

Lott's comments in support of the segregationist Dixiecrat platform should be an anathema to any Republican.

Kindly direct me to a quote where Lott supported the "segregationist Dixiecrat platform."

[Bluntpoint]

"Lott racially demonized and sacraficed himself."

Some of these guys need to work on a suicide hotline.

They can plead with the person contemplating suicide:

"Well, if you intend on following throught with your threat, would you shoot me first."

[beckett]

Yeah, right, try and taint me as a "former Democrat." It only shows you have no clue about the core values of the party you purport to be a member of, one of which -- color-blindness -- is being trod underfoot as we speak while Trent Lott pays obeisance to affirmative action.

Lott was not simply a "being nice an old man." He made a major blunder that has now snowballed into a catastrophe for his party by publicly telling a joke that Yellow Dog Democrat/Dixiecrats probably have been telling privately for decades. The joke is NOT REPUBLICAN and would never have been uttered by ANY Republican at any time.

[beckett]

By the way, since you seem to be unaware of it, Lott actully is a former Yellow Dog Democrat.

[Bluntpoint]

Kindly direct me to a quote where Lott supported the "segregationist Dixiecrat platform."


Trent Lott said, "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."

[gridlock]

Kindly direct me to a quote where Lott supported the "segregationist Dixiecrat platform."

You don't get out much, do you?

To quote Lott:

"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 the years, either."

- Strom Thurmond ran for President on the Dixiecrat ticket.
- The exclusive focus Dixiecrat platform was the preservation of racial segregation and the right of states to maintain racial segregation.
- Most people think that this platform was repugnant.
- Trent Lott, on the other hand, is proud that his state supported this platform.
- Trent Lott thinks that if Strom Thurmond had prevailed and this platform was made the law of the land, we would not have had all of "these problems".

That sounds like support of the segregationist Dixiecrat platform to me.

[Bluntpoint]

Apparently, and the very reason we are discussing this stuff today, Strom seemed mighty partial to the black issue.

The Dixiecrats did not separate themselves from the Democrats in 1948 based upon national defense, fiscal policy or union vs. corporate matters. Their platform was segregation. Period.



This is what Thurmond said in a nationwide radio address on the eve of the 1948 election:

"Don't forget the so-called civil rights program would bring about the end of segregation in the South, forcing mixing of the races in our hotels, in our restaurants, in our schools, in our swimming pools and in all public places. This change in our customs is not desired by either the white or the colored race."


Remember these great words from the platform that Lott said would have changed this county for the good:

(From the Dixiecrat ballot, with Strom at the top of the ticket)

REMEMBER

A vote for Truman electors is a direct order to our Congressmen and Senators from Mississippi to vote for passage of Truman’s so-called civil-rights program in the next Congress. This means the vicious FEPC-anti poll tax-anti-lynching and anti-segregation proposals will become the law of the land and our way of life in the South will be gone forever.

[aristeides]

You're not going to admit that you're reading an interpretation -- a tendentious interpretation, and the same tendentious interpretation all the networks were guilty of -- into Lott's statement? Do you think Lott's similar statement made in 2000 when Thurmond was signing a defense bill was also in support of the "segregationist Dixiecrat platform"?

[aristeides]

I know what Thurmond stood for in '48. But you guys have just not proved how much of that Lott had in mind -- or even knew, if he had bothered to think, which I very much doubt he did -- when he made his statements.

[Poohbah]

You're not going to admit that you're reading an interpretation -- a tendentious interpretation, and the same tendentious interpretation all the networks were guilty of -- into Lott's statement?

"Tendentious" is a word I'd use to describe Clinton's efforts to justify the stuff that came out of his pie hole--or your efforts to try to convince us that the surface reading of Lott's statement is the wrong one.

Thurmond only ran for President one time. The one time he ran, segregation was the platform he ran on.

BTW, in case you did not notice--words mean things.

[gridlock]

How do you interpret Lott's specific statement that he is proud that his state supported the Dixiecrat candidate for President and that a Dixiecrat President would have prevented all of "these problems"?

What other possible interpretation is there? It was a very simple, direct statement:

He aknowledges his state voted for the Dixiecrat for President.
He is proud of that vote.
He thinks that voting for the Dixiecrats was the proper path for the entire country to follow.
He thinks that if the Dixiecrats had won, the country would not have had all of "these problems".

What other possible interpretation is there? Since the Dixiecrat platform was all about preserving racial segregation, what could he possibly mean by "these problems"?

[Smogger]

or even knew, if he had bothered to think, which I very much doubt he did -- when he made his statements.

Not bothering to think.. When making comments... On national TV... As the Senate Majority Leader..

That's pretty much all I need to know.

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