[NarniaSC]

There was no ambiguity to his statement. Everyone at Strom's party with any brains thought long and hard how to phrase their praise.

"States' Rights" was 95% about segregation. Dewey's platform - I was amazed to read - was reasonably conservative without being segregationist, so there was a good Truman alternative already out there. If the Dixiecraps had *really* just wanted limited government, they would have bolted to the Republicans, even in 1948.

Strom winning in '48 would have been an unmitigated evil, giving a national mandate for Jim Crow (and I say this, like almost all South Carolinians, as a lover of the post-60s Strom). Only a complete political idiot or closet racist would dream otherwise. I'll give Trent the benefit of the doubt: he's an idiot.

[GreatOne]

Strom winning in '48 would have been an unmitigated evil, giving a national mandate for Jim Crow (and I say this, like almost all South Carolinians, as a lover of the post-60s Strom). Only a complete political idiot or closet racist would dream otherwise. I'll give Trent the benefit of the doubt: he's an idiot.

Agree 100%, particularly that Lott is an idiot. He definitely should have qualified what he meant by "State's Rights". Abiding by that is not the same like saying, "Nazism was good, except for the killing of the Jew." There, the whole ideology was severely flawed. State's Rights, which is simply the following of the 10th Amendment, is a perfectly good thing to believe in, but can have an evil impact if taken to an extreme. The 14th Amendment trumped the 10th regarding segregation Jim Crow, anyway, so Strom's use of State's Rights as an excuse was a bastardized interpretation.