His careless quips have put the GOP's agenda in jeopardy, and the agenda is far more important than the man. I am not willing to save Lott and lose Pickering, and it is evident that to save Lott from his lot, the GOP will have to ante up a little bit of its recently gained power and hand it over to the other side of the isle.
Lott is supposed to be better than this, he's not some freshman congressman from Yeehaw Junction, he is a major player in some rather serious games.
Yet, he wants an opportunity for on-the-job training to shed his racial cluelessness... with a thin Senate majority... a rare GOP trifecta in the Executive and Legislative Branches... the next decade or two of the Supreme Court at stake... while jeopardizing the GOP's chances in 2004... in wartime.
I look at this debate and on the other side I see, "it's not fair, we can't cave to the Democrats on this."
I guess our priorities are all messed up, Luis.
Trent (and the GOP) could have seized this opportunity and forced the Democrats into a dialogue on racial relations in the US.
We missed a great opportunity to expose the left for the racial blackmailers that they are. We missed a great opportunity to remind Jackson that he marched arm in arm, with Jews in Palm Beach County, all memories of Hymetown forgotten. We missed a great opportunity to offer Al Sharpton the opportunity to apologize for Tawana Bradley.
We blew the opportunity to take the fight to them, and instead we have the leader of the Senate Republicans making serial apologies to anyone darker than George Hamilton.
I don't think Trent is a racist, I don't think he "longs for the days of Jim Crow", and I don't think the Dems think so either. But they have to seize on something to draw attention away from the fact that they are a Party without a message, or a leader for that matter.
That's what Trent handed them, in a silver platter...the issue that would draw attention away from their own shortcomings.