DRUDGE-Rove/Bush Requested More Forceful Apology, No Resignation Today

I guess the President Pro Tem thing will change after the 108th convenes.... Isn't his position normally the most senior member of the Majority party? Yep the President Pro Tem lines up behind the Vice President and Speaker of the House in line of succession to the Presidency.

AP

WASHINGTON (Dec. 13) - Sen. Trent Lott readied yet another apology on Friday for comments that seemed to show nostalgia for the nation's segregationist past, and a spokesman said the Mississippi lawmaker does not intend to step down as Senate GOP leader.

Lott, who has apologized twice before for remarks made last week at a birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond, told reporters, ``I am going to expand on that even more this afternoon'' at a news conference in his home state. Asked whether Lott intends to give up his leadership post, spokesman Ron Bonjean responded, ``No.''

Lott touched off the furor while praising Thurmond, R-S.C., at his 100th birthday party. He said Mississippians were proud to have voted for Thurmond in 1948 when he headed the pro-segregationist Dixiecrat ticket.

``And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either,'' Lott added.

The remarks triggered an outpouring of anger from Democrats and Republicans alike, culminating in criticism from President Bush on Thursday.

``Any suggestion that the segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive and it is wrong,'' the president told a multiracial audience as the White House, intent on courting minority voters, sought distance from Lott's remarks.

But Bush's spokesman said the president didn't believe Lott, set to take over as Senate majority leader in January, should step down, and several Republican senators came to his defense.

While Lott serves as leader at the pleasure of the Senate's Republicans, his remarks provided Democrats with ample ammunition to attack. The Congressional Black Caucus issued a statement on Thursday calling for a formal censure of the GOP leader.

Lott issued a short apology on Monday acknowledging his ``poor choice of words,'' and, as criticisms continued to mount, gave several interviews on Wednesday in which he said his ``terrible'' and ``insensitive'' remarks were meant only as a gesture of affection for Thurmond.

The White House at first tried to stay clear of the controversy, but Bush and his advisers, in meetings Wednesday night and Thursday morning, decided it could undermine their efforts to increase black support in the next election. In 2000 Bush received just 9 percent of the black vote.

``The founding ideals of the political party I represent was and remains today the equal dignity and equal rights of every American,'' Bush told an audience including several black ministers in a speech Thursday unveiling a new policy to integrate religious charities into government programs.

White House officials said Lott was being given a chance to retain his leadership post, although it was ultimately up to Lott and his fellow GOP senators. Republicans, at least publicly, stood behind Lott.

``The president did Trent Lott a big favor today,'' said Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who accompanied Bush to Philadelphia. ``He basically cleared the air. ... This is not an issue that divides us anymore.''

``I think Senator Lott has already fixed it,'' said Lott's Mississippi colleague, Republican Sen. Thad Cochran. ``He's explained that he didn't mean to be endorsing any policies of the past, particularly the segregationist platform that Strom Thurmond ran on in '48.''

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has clashed with Lott on various issues in the past, said Lott still needed to ``have a full-blown press conference with an opening description of his absolute outright hostility to discrimination in any form.''

Lott, who has previously admitted supporting segregation as a student at the University of Mississippi when U.S. marshals brought the first black student to the school, continued to be battered by revelations on his civil rights record.

Time Magazine on Thursday reported that some 40 years ago Lott led an effort to prevent his all-white fraternity from integrating any of its chapter. Critics have also listed such past actions as his 1983 vote against a federal holiday for Martin Luther King Jr., his 1982 vote against the Voting Rights Act extension and his efforts to restore confederate president Jefferson Davis' citizenship. It was also reported that at a 1980 rally in Mississippi he expressed similar regrets that Thurmond hadn't been elected in 1948.

``We have examined Senator Lott's record,'' Congressional Black Caucus leaders Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, and Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said in a statement. ``It is offensive and morally reprehensible that a public official with such a record would be reinstated to serve as majority leader of the United States Senate.''

Lott, who has a 30-year career in the House and the Senate, rose to the position of Senate Republican leader and majority leader in 1996 when Bob Dole quit the Senate to run for president. His Senate colleagues re-elected him without opposition last month.

I guess the President Pro Tem thing will change after the 108th convenes

Well, Byrd could remain president pro tem if the RATs manage to scrape together a Senate majority out of this flap.

Why can't we be the ones to demand that those three communists who went to Baghdad be expelled...

Actually, for the record, there was another one that went over and kowtowed to Saddam a week before the infamous McDermott/Bonoir party...RAT Nick Rahall of West Virginia's 3rd Congressional District. He has also taken campaign funds from people who have terrorist ties.

We are working on mounting a stiff challenge to him in '04.

The next President Pro Tempore will likely be Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska. He is the most senior member of the Senate GOP Conference. He was appointed and sworn in on December 24, 1968 after his predeccessor died in office.