...the truth of how the GOP brought the South into the modern world of racial equality.
For the Jim Crow South was created by Democrats and ruthlessly sustained by them until the 1948 convention. From 1948 to 1968 the Democrats were split on racial politics. For instance, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed with Republican votes and opposed mainly by southern Democrats. From 1968 onward, the national Democratic Party embraced the reverse: Jim Crow politics of racial preferences.
That broke Democrats into two. National Democratic candidates wanted to impose reverse discrimination on the nation, including the South, which would have meant near civil war and the revival of a more serious version of the Ku Klux Klan. Local Democrats, led by George Wallace, wanted to resist even "color blind" civil rights, which would have meant near civil war and a second "Reconstruction."
Into this political gap stepped the Republicans, some former Democrats such as Lott, to persuade a sullen and resentful region to accept a steady movement toward color-blind racial equality. In order to soothe the South into accepting the 1964 Civil Rights Act, such politicians had to treat their constituents not as bigots but as essentially good people open to change. They had to make occasional gestures of solidarity with the southern tradition by, for instance, praising Jefferson Davis or defending the Confederate flag. And they had to make speeches to bodies like the Citizens' Councils.
But what did these speeches say? Nine times out of 10, especially behind closed doors, they went like this: "Look, boys, I know you all are decent folks. But we gotta admit that we treated the Negroes badly, and there have to be changes. Some of those changes I don't like any more than you. Others--let's admit it--are long overdue. And all of them will help us attract new industries and make everybody better off. To make this work, though, we need responsible leadership. And that sure as hell doesn't mean the northern Democrats."
This kind of politics is messy, uninspiring and not particularly noble. It explains why a master of them, like Lott, strikes Charles Krauthammer, Andrew Sullivan, the National Review, and the high-minded philosophers of the Blogosphere as shifty, insincere and opportunist. But that is how democratic politics works when the voters are attached to institutions and traditions that have to be reformed half out of existence.
O'Sullivan's article is entitled "Insiders know Lott got raw deal" (www.suntimes.com/output/osullivan/cst-edt-osul24.html). It was posted earlier on FR as the double-feature to a particularly nasty column by Jesse Jackson ("Ouster just an effort to hide GOP's agenda")(www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/811824.posts)