Posted on 01/01/2003 8:43:17 AM PST by TLBSHOW
So Much More Than Lott
So, already by Christmas the Republicans took their newly revealed "racist" Trent Lott and chopped him off like a hood ornament and left him folded up in the glove compartment like a paper napkin full of forgotten fruitcake.
Nice crisis resolution, huh? Neat image management, right?
Not so fast.
One problem. Trent Lott is NOT a racist.
Nobody believes Lott is a racist. His enemies don't believe that. His friends don't believe that. And nobody believes Trent Lott believes America would have been better off if Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948.
What everybody DOES believe is that Lott maladroitly gave his enemies the right to say, childhood-game fashion, "You SAID it and – ha ha – we can prove it!" Lott's true feelings – and actions – regarding racial issues fell off the bottom on the relevancy charts.
The Republican Party just turned and ran from what they feared would be dreadful political trouble down the road. That fear turned the quality of intra-party justice from King Solomon to King Kong.
Am I the only one troubled by this Republican unconditional surrender to an obviously phony charge?
Can anybody name the last Democrat tossed by his teammates into the crater of a live volcano no matter how racist, anti-Semitic, anti-American or clinically insane a comment he or she uttered?
Please don't misunderstand; I don't hold that Democratic loyalty to their rogues and fools as a role model. There simply wouldn't BE a Democratic Party if they jettisoned their own according to every political correctness breeze, real or artificial, the way the Republicans did. So let's stick to Republicans and Trent Lott.
In sticking to Trent Lott, let me quickly point out that I'm not talking about Trent Lott; rather, I'm talking about so much MORE than Trent Lott.
You hear Republicans ratifying their firing squad by saying, "I never thought much of him as a leader anyhow." Not even a nice try, folks. That doesn't in the slightest excuse the way you handled things.
"By the fifth or sixth apology he'd abandoned every principle that makes me a Republican in the first place," goes the refrain; and that's just as irrelevant as the justification preceding.
The key question, rather, is, What does the Trent Lott affair now say about the Republican Party? I suggest it says something that was better left as a vague suspicion or, better yet, never thought of at all.
It says: "These are my principles; and if you don't like them, fear not. I have others." It says, "These are our leaders, and we won't surrender them – unless you attack." Instead of a political army guided by courage and conviction, we now see the Republicans as a nudist in the middle of a barbed-wire fence.
Republican political fragrance finishes first. Trent Lott's innocence finishes last.
Delete, please, any notion that my feelings owe to some good-ol'-boy affinity with the Old South, and double-click on the fact that, at the age when Trent Lott was figuring out ways to keep his national fraternity lily-white, I and my hearty band of white Southern activists were (successfully!) rallying the student body of the University of North Carolina to overthrow the university administration's policy of making our first four black students sit in the Jim Crow section of Kenan Stadium instead of sitting with the rest of us students.
That's important to ME but, likewise, irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Dogs aren't the only ones who smell fear. We all do. The beautiful woman smells the fear of the nervous nerd asking for a date. The boss smells the fear of the insecure worker asking for a raise. And the voter smells the fear of a political party – even one controlling all three branches of government – that so quickly sacrifices a leader who did NOT mis-think, who did NOT mis-act, but who merely mis-SPOKE.
Trent Lott's birthday party remark about Sen. Thurmond was breathtakingly brain-dead.
(It was not unprecedented. President Gerald Ford said in debate to Jimmy Carter in 1976 that the Soviet Union did not exercise domination in Eastern Europe. And he no more believed that even as he was saying it than Lott believed America should have elected Strom Thurmond. Trent Lott's mysterious brain failure only cost him the party leadership in the Senate. Ford's probably cost him the presidency!)
If you should ask me, "Why, then, do they say things they don't believe?" you prove to me you've never competed in the public arena without a script.
Hear and heed, now, Republicans. All your friends and all your foes now know where your buttons are and exactly how high and how quickly you will jump when they're pushed.
Here's how the Republicans SHOULD have handled it.
Lott himself should have instantly announced that he would have preferred Republican Governor Tom Dewey win the election of 1948; next choice, Democratic President Harry Truman; and in no way and in no wise would he have favored Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond. End of statement; but, admittedly, not end of story.
I would then have leaked that a "steaming" President Bush had abruptly canceled his meeting with the Prime Minister of Macedonia or Paraguay for a closed-door session alone with Trent Lott. Let lower-level aides then leak that the sound of White House breaking furniture reached but did not exceed the decibel level of a routine Clinton marriage quarrel in that meeting.
Let the nation know that the president in no uncertain dimension let Trent Lott know where the bear sat in the buckwheat and let the no-comments begin with Trent Lott exiting that meeting.
When the Democrats inevitably closed in for a blood-lunch, let some high-but-not-top-level Republican official tell them: "It's all over and done with as far as we're concerned. And, by the way, we have a great idea for the Democrats.
"We all have shortcomings. Let THEM take care of THEIR Jesse Jackson's 'Hymie-town,' Al Sharpton's 'diamond merchants' (Jewish businessmen) intruding into Harlem, the gracious racist Sen. Byrd's white-nigger-black-nigger soliloquy, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney's 'Bush knew in advance about the Israeli-planned-9/11 attack' and Sen. Patty Murray's 'Bin Laden is more popular than we are because he builds and we bomb.'
"We, for our part, will make clear who we think should and should not have won the election of 1948."
The "big fear" of Republicans was stated often and bluntly while Lott was busy apologizing. "In the next election, unless Lott is drawn, quartered and fed to the donkeys, every Republican candidate in 2004 will face TV commercials beginning with Trent Lott's endorsement of Strom Thurmond followed by footage of Dixiecrat Thurmond in 1948 blatantly appealing for segregation."
As a usual-but-not-always Republican voter, I say bring it on. Such an absurd backward reach in 2004 would never rekindle what would then have become a minor upscuddle way back in 2002. I insist that either the Democrats in 2004 would never have used it OR it would have blown up like a grenade in their faces.
I never made it all the way up to be a scientist. But in grammar school I loved watching a fire die when the oxygen was cut off. I would have loved to see this fire die the same way.
Republicans, particularly conservatives, have an occupational hazard. Lots of people do. Those who work at computers hours on end get carpal tunnel syndrome. Football players retire with bashed-up knees.
Conservatives, for their part, get drawn like seafaring victims of the mythical Lorelei onto the treacherous rocks by the power of liberal seduction. "I am a conservative," the syndrome goes. "Therefore, when I commit a liberal or an anti-conservative act, the liberals will love me."
There are, indeed, many voters who welcome the Republican annihilation of Trent Lott. BUT THOSE ARE VOTERS WHO WOULD NEVER HAVE VOTED FOR TRENT LOTT OR ANY OTHER REPUBLICAN ANYHOW!
Those voters the Republicans intended to woo by sacrificing Trent Lott are precisely the voters who say to the Democratic Party, "No matter what you do that I dislike, I shall always be FOR you." And to the Republican Party they say, "And no matter what you do that I LIKE, I shall always be AGAINST you."
So, GOP, you called no attention to your brotherly proclivities. You called attention only to your cowardice.
In Gore Vidal's hit play "The Best Man," the protagonist, aching head in both aching hands, says, "I don't mind being a bastard. But why am I such an INEPT bastard?"
Vidal is far from my political lodestar, but he came across with a good line.
It's not that Republicans are cowards.
It's that they're such INEPT cowards.
Sorry, if you want a break then please don't post what people say in a prejudicial way, out of context.
The full context -- "Well thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you my good friend and my predecessor, my hero, Bob Dole, for that introduction, that very brief introduction I might add [Laughter] But for Senator Strom Thurmond's family and friends and admirers all, it's a great pleasure for me to be here with you today, and I know that you're enjoying every minute of this. And I knew that the previous remarks would be just as they were. I mean, after all, Bob Dole received the Republican nomination and dang near was elected President of the United States telling Strom Thurmond jokes. [Laughter] If he'd just gotten himself some new material there toward the end he would have done it. [Laughter] I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for President we voted for him. [Laughter] We're proud of it. [More laughter] And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either. "
I will now proceed to break down each Lott comment and tell you what I think Lott's intention was based on the full context. I will then wait for you to do the same.....
Bear in mind, all the previous speakers to Lott, were trying to be self-effacing and funny. This includes the dead-pan speaking Dole.
First Lott roasts the long winded Dole -- "...that very brief introduction I might add" [Laughter]
Then Lott roasts the previous speakers and he roasts Dole and Thurmond -- "it's a great pleasure for me to be here with you today, and I know that you're enjoying every minute of this. And I knew that the previous remarks would be just as they were. I mean, after all, Bob Dole received the Republican nomination and dang near was elected President of the United States telling Strom Thurmond jokes." [Laughter]
Then he roasts Dole again -- "If he'd just gotten himself some new material there toward the end he would have done it." [Laughter]
Notice how he refers to the word "material" as in commedy material, which was the full context of what the speakers at this birthday roast were doing.
Then Lott roasts his home state of Mississippi and he roasts Thurmond, both twice -- "I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for President we voted for him." [Laughter] "We're proud of it". [More laughter]
And the final joke -- "And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
The full context of the remarks, was simply a light hearted roast at the 100th birthday party of Strom Thurmond. IMO, you PC reactionary types here at FR are dupes of the enemy.
Hey Torie -- you Lott/Dixiecrat apologist you!!
Hey TLB, "Concearned" has it right. It's time to move on.
SINKSPUR RESPONDED WITH: "Wrong. There are many voters warily eyeing the GOP for its next capitulation to the race pimps. They've seen how a man can be capriciously thrown overboard for misspeaking."
NO!...Lott was forced out because of REPEATED INCOMPETENCE and INEFFECTIVENESS!!!!! His "misspeaking" was just the straw that broke the camel's back.
ON A PREVIOUS POST, I WROTE: "Thinking that Lott was forced out of leadership because of RACISM is like thinking that Klinton was Impeached because of SEX...Lott was forced out because of REPEATED INCOMPETENCE and INEFFECTIVENESS LONG BEFORE the current issue. Klinton was Impeached because of PERJURY and OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE in a CIVIL RIGHTS SEXUAL HARASSMENT case, among other things."
AMEN! You stated it EXACTLY RIGHT.
Kind of late for revelations about "Lott is not a racist"
It don't matter no more, no more.. It's done too late.
Cynicom, it is EXACTLY the OPPOSITE of what you fear. The Republicans FINALLY showed some SPINE and got RID of a STUPID, IDIOTIC, INCOMPETENT, INEFFECTIVE RINO PANSY! And the RATS are SORRY now that they LOST Lott.
Have you noticed how the story went on for OVER TWO WEEKS---UNTIL Lott was forced out? Now, Lott isn't even mentioned, much less discussed, in the media and/or talk shows.
Lott is ANCIENT HISTORY!! MOVE ON!
The realization I have finally come up with regarding your point of a "lessor of two evils" to vote for...
...is that if MY candidate fails to win in the REPUBLICAN PRIMARY, it is because I FAILED to do MY job to WORK 200% to get MY CANDIDATE NOMINATED via the PRIMARY.
If I FAILED, and another candidate wins the PRIMARY, then it is MY responsibility to WORK FOR and SUPPORT MY PARTY's nominee.
Start looking at it being YOUR FAILURE to either get YOUR CHOICE NOMINATED via the PRIMARY, or YOUR FAILURE to RUN for the position if you think there aren't any satisfactory candidates to choose from in the PRIMARY, and then WORK FOR and SUPPORT THE WINNER of the PRIMARY!
If we ALL start taking THAT attitude, we might just find ourselves WORKING OUR REAR ENDS OFF to get OUR guy nominated via the PRIMARY.
No...what Frist said was NOT "saying in actuality the same thing [as Lott said.]" What Frist said was FACTS...NOT STUPID RACIST-SOUNDING remarks. Note, that I did NOT say RACIST remarks...I said RACIST-SOUNDING remarks.
They way that Frist stated HIS remarks was the way that Lott SHOULD have. But Lott is an INCOMPETENT and INEFFECTIVE RINO.
Do you not think that what Strom did was acting out of PRINCIPLE, CHARACTER and COURAGE?
Although you may not agree with Strom's position (I don't), I have NO doubt that he acted out of PRINCIPLE and CHARACTER (remember the climate in the deep south regarding race at the time).
And surely, you don't doubt that it took COURAGE to split away from (and dilute) his OWN Party, do you?
I see nothing but FACTS in Frist's comments about Strom.
EVERYTHING you wrote in post number 93 was EXACTLY 100% RIGHT ON THE MARK!!!!!
I understood your post to mean that this thread was 'flogging the dead horse' of the 'Lott saga' as you called it. It is my humble opinion that the 'flogging' of the 'dead horse' occurred while Sen. Lott was still in power as ML.
What the author of this article, and TLBSHOW by posting it, wish to discuss, is not the 'dead horse' (Lott) but those who 'flogged' him, and why they did so. I am of the opinion that it needs to be discussed, but you seem adamant in your attempts to sweep it under the rug - the old elephant in the livingroom trick.
MY OPINION is that this author, Barry Farber, is flogging a dead horse.
I know. You are incorrect. The author clearly stated, not only in his title, but in the body of his article, "In sticking to Trent Lott, let me quickly point out that I'm not talking about Trent Lott; rather, I'm talking about so much MORE than Trent Lott....The key question, rather, is, What does the Trent Lott affair now say about the Republican Party?"
If you don't want to discuss it, don't. What purpose do you serve by trying to stop others from doing so?
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