I think Lott understands the need to be accommodating to Dems in some ways of day-to-day business, but I think he doesn't know when he ought to switch away from accommodating strategies. Daschle has noticed this. He has noticed that Trent is not very good at whipping his RINOs into shape and drawing a line in the sand. There are many, many instances of Lott's failures in this regard over the years; of course, the Clinton trial is the best example.
(Gosh, Trent just gave away the whole farm, letting Bumpers mock the Constitution and ultimately the Senate itself. Because Trent was afraid of failing, he was afraid to try. He wanted to "get back to business"--but the real business of the Senate under the Constitution was that of convicting the sitting President for his rather high crimes, not cowering before inarguably maniacal opinion polls like a slavish ideological Democrat.)
I think Daschle's initially "forgiving" attitude toward Lott was also motivated by the preference for Lott to remain in place in order for the Dems to continue the race-baiting attacks. The fact is, Daschle is a Saul Alinsky-style radical. He has generally bought into Hillary's approach of making accusation after accusation after accusation (and lying incessantly) as the best means of effecting social (political!) change.
Someone might say that this radical-liberal philosophy doesn't explain Daschle's initially gracious approach toward Trent Lott. But it does when you realize that Daschle is actually a Clinton wannabe. The Clinton style is to let surrogates do the really vicious stuff (Carville, Begala, Jackson, Sharpton, etc.)--so as to appear gracious in the nasty fight.
Tom wants to be the soft-spoken guy in the whole mess. This is his political persona. When he gets manuveured into the role of angrily griping against our POTUS on the Senate floor (as he did before the election), he can't pull it off very well. And he knows that. It's not his "bag."
Attacking the conservative talk show hosts is another illustration of the fact that he understands the Dems' Alinsky-style game plan, but he would rather let other guys be the ones executing it.
Ah, but Daschle still does what he has to do in the political arena--even when he doesn't always like his team-player role. Maxine Waters forced him to become an agitator against Lott. The fact that he can get forced to change his stance so radically and so quickly is just proof that he doesn't yet have sufficient stature to be the Clintonian hypocrite playing the nice-guy role--because he is not the real leader of the Dems' attacks against the Republicans.
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Notice that the above analysis, if correct, underscores the fact that the Dems hope Trent Lott will not resign. That's the last thing they want to happen.
The implications of this are ominous. That brings me to Rush Limbaugh's take on the whole subject. It gets complicated, but I think Rush is wrong about some pretty important points. As I said on another thread, Rush is now suggesting on the radio that the Republicans ought to stonewall the Dems to let them reveal their true colors as unreasonable and mean-spirited. He thinks that this will create a backlash against them.
He is arguing that we can write off the Blacks. This is temptingly pragmatic, but I say that this is not a good long-term strategy of racial conciliation, and it would represent an abandonment of Bush's plans to reach out to the Blacks for as long as it takes to wake them up.
Rush thrives on controversy--and controversy is sometimes good--but writing off a major segment of the populace in not appropriate strategy for a properly inclusivist President of a pluralistic nation.
Thus, I still think Lott should resign his ML post. His statement was mild in some ways but politically hideous in spite of its mildness. And Rush's sarcastic suggestion that Lott should use Bill Clinton's approach (waffling over word meanings, sending out spokesmen, assembling prayer groups, etc.) is actually an argument that Lott should RESIGN.
Rush hasn't noticed this, but it is obvious--in that it is obvious that Republicans should NOT resort to Clinton's approach.
Rush is letting his own wittiness obscure his judgment.
To show you what I mean, let me point out that his proposal that we just write off the Blacks flies squarely in the face of the fact that he has been getting some pretty interesting calls from long-time Black listeners to his radio program. The very fact that these political sleepers are calling in should remind us that we are poised to make a lot more progress with the Blacks. And it would behoove us not to blow it now.
Even if we write off the Blacks, the very fact that the Republicans are facing withering accusations of racism will likely disturb the Hispanics whom Bush has been courting with considerably more success.
Besides, there are a lot of white "undecideds" who will NOT understand the hypocrisy of the Dems if we take Rush's approach. Gosh, they will just see the present hypocrisy of Republicans who are refusing to clean house.
We have to seize the high moral ground. We have to do things in a way of crystal clarity for the undecideds. It's precisely because the undecideds are not all that discerning. That's why they are still undecided.
A lot of the white undecideds have family backgrounds of extreme Democratic populism (what I would call the Woody Guthrie crowd--even if they don't know who he was), and they have been taught all their lives that Republicans have instincts as oppressors.
Of course, these suspicious fence-sitters will typically come to their senses and vote with the Republicans when they see that the Dems are undermining national security. In other words, there was a real backlash against the Dems in 2002. But we can't count on it to spill over as a continuing resentment against the Dems in the present controversy. The present backlash does not clearly involve the war. And it will be hard for the Republicans to frame the Dems' rhetoric as unpatriotic.
Thus, we could lose the votes of the undecided crowd if the issues swing away from the issues of the war--and back to the confusing social stuff which is the historical bread and-butter of the Dems' political deceptions.
And the fellow who doesn't think this could happen in the present political scenario should do a little soul-searching. Even those of us who are NOT "undecideds" but serious conservatives found Trent Lott's remarks NAUSEATING.
And remember this: Many of the Dems are becoming pretty hawkish in the war effort. They may yet succeed in resetting the agenda of political controversy. Historically speaking, its what the Dems do very well except where war itself is directly involved.
I hope that our POTUS will see the very real political danger in all of this stuff--pretty quickly. As I said, the only place of real safety is the inarguably high moral ground. We need to publicly accept Trent Lott's apology. As Robert Novak would say, It's the Christian thing to do. But we need remove Lott from his leadership role and do it pretty fast. Our POTUS needs to take the issue of alleged racism within the Republican Party completely off the proverbial table.
And that will snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat.
***
BTW, most of the FReepers who have been posting on this topic seem to agree with me thus far, not with Rush. See also my post #19 at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/804675/posts?page=19#19