After a fiery speech by Strom Thurmond at a Mississippi campaign rally in November 1980, Lott, then a congressman, told a crowd: 'You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today'... MORE... Quotation appeared in an account of the rally on Nov. 3, 1980, in Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss...
And as it appears at the top of this thread:
After a fiery speech by Thurmond at a Mississippi campaign rally for Ronald Reagan in November 1980, Lott, then a congressman, told a crowd in Jackson: "You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today." More to follow...The latter paragraph, the older one, is far more ambiguous. I don't think you two are working off the same one.