Vodkapundit - Should He Stay Or Should He Go Now?

Should He Stay Or Should He Go Now?

Posted by Stephen Green · 12 December 2002

(or “What Do You Do With a Racist Leader?”)

Is Republican Senate Majority Leader-to-be a segregationist throwback, or just a gabby fool who doesn’t know how to apologize? And does it matter?

A few days ago, Lott praised fellow Senator Strom Thurmond on his 100th birthday, and said the country would be a better place, or at least less troubled, had Thurmond been elected President in 1948. In yesterday’s non-apologetic apology on the Sean Hannity show, Lott claimed he was praising Strom’s record on supporting the military, law and order, and a long career of public service.

That’s not an apology, no matter how many times he claimed it was. Lott – again! – copped out. Thurmond ran in 1948 on the Dixiecrat ticket with a one-issue platform. The issue was segregation – “now, tomorrow, and forever” in the words of fellow Southern racist George Wallace.

So is Lott really a racist at heart, even though he claimed yesterday his words were a “mistake of the brain, not of the heart”? Words, incidentally, he stole from Jesse Jackson, in his 1984 non-apology for calling New York City “Hymietown.”

I don’t think Lott is racist. Or at least I’d like to think that. Honestly, his history on the subject is somewhat sketchy. And we can never truly look into the heart or the brain of another human being. But we can judge people’s words and actions, and hold them up to the standards required by their jobs and their positions.

Trent Lott fails that test.

The Senate leader of a party with a less-than-stellar history on race relations must, on this issue at the very least, be like Caesar’s wife: above reproach. Former Ku Klux Klan kleagle Robert Byrd surrendered his seniority to allow George Mitchell to become the Democrat’s Senate Majority Leader in 1986. While Lott’s sins certainly pale in comparison to Byrd’s, he fails on other counts, too.

A party leader doesn’t praise a segregationist platform – that much is simple. But to try and fail twice to make amends is inexcusable. To allow the possible taint of racism to be the lead story, day after day, while your President is trying to wage a difficult war is (in Washington terms) worse than inexcusable; it’s bad politics.

So how will this all play out?

If I were to run one of Will Saletan’s silly Whatever-o-meters (that’s another essay), I’d put Lott’s odds of losing or resigning at about 40%. But that’s today. Tomorrow, next week – or even this afternoon – things could change greatly, especially if Lott persists in underestimating how badly he screwed up, and how truly repentant he needs to be. And when I say repentant, I mean it. Too many Republicans continue to play too many games with race, and it has got to stop. And to stop whining that many Democrats (paging Al Sharpton) are worse. Clean your own house first, Republicans. That might not be fair, but that’s the game.

What I want to know is, where is the rest of the Republican Senate Majority on Lott? I’m not too worried yet about the President not speaking to this issue – it’s still largely a Senate matter, and politically unwise for Bush to step in (yet). But where is the Republicans' Harold Ford, willing to stand up to idiocy and challenge its leadership role? Where is the modern Barry Goldwater to tell Lott quietly that it’s time to step down? Lott isn’t just hanging his own self out to dry, he could take fellow Republicans with him in two years.

Has not one of them enough survival skills to take on this buffoon and win? And that’s to say nothing of ambition.

The blogosphere has beaten this issue to death already. I know I’m done with it. Talk radio is almost there, too. Television was a little slower to catch on, but they have – and the feeding frenzy has just begun. They smell blood, and they should.

Comments

As always, very nicely written. I agree that whether or not Lott is a racist doesn't matter anymore. What he definitely is, is a liability to Republicans.

Just one little quibble. In 1988, Byrd was succeeded by George Mitchell. Not "Robert."

Posted by: Pejman Yousefzadeh at December 11, 2002 11:30 PM

Segregate Trent Lott from Senate leadership - now, tomorrow, and forever.

Posted by: Alan K. Henderson at December 12, 2002 01:15 AM

Yet another reason I'm not a REpub anymore,I never could stand that Vichy mentality in the party leadership.

Now if the left would only demand that the Grand Wizard of West Virginia resign.......Naw,never happen,that's another reason I'm not a Dem.

Posted by: M. at December 12, 2002 07:04 AM

I believe he was unable to apologize for the misconstrued version of what he said, because he didn't mean it that way, and so it looked lame. R's need to circle the wagons here with a consistent message: Lott's mistake was in not identifying how easily someone could misconstrue the words. The scarlet letter will not fade until he is out; move on by moving him out. I don't see R's losing alot by doing so, except for setting a bad precedent. But how long do precedents last, in this short-term-memory environment?

Posted by: bill at December 12, 2002 08:23 AM

Lott's party is the one with a "less than stellar history on race relations?

Democrats:supported slavery and segregration as basically a one-party state in the South through the 1960s (excepting for Reconstruction).

Republicans: Ended slavery, provided most of the votes for the 1964 civil rights act.

Of course, some Republicans for the past 20-30 years have not supported racial quotas and racial preferences for Black people and other "minorites" (although the GOP leadership always likes quotas - like the bill Bush #1 signed circa 1990 which he himself called a quota bill), angering People like Louis Farakahan, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson. I guess that is what makes the GOP such a failure on "race relations

Although....Lott should resign as Majority Leader for the good of the party. He is an albatross just like Gingrich was.

Posted by: Joel at December 12, 2002 08:25 AM

Along with the big problems with this that have already been discussed, there's also Truman. Truman was elected in 1948, and he's pretty popular with mainstream America. Among other things, Lott seemed to be saying Harry Truman really f'ed this country up. Huh? (Now, I don't know who were his S. Ct appointments, and I venture to say most Americans don't either, so his legacy may be quite different than it appears, but if he was grumbling about federal court appointments, that was pretty oblique.)

If he'd talked about how "all these problems today" stem from the baby boomers in the 60s and 70s, a lot of people would be right with that, but he's got people thinking he's still worked up over the 1948 Presidential race. In addition to bigotted, it makes him look just plain old (especially alligning himself closer with the 100-yr-old).

Again, that's not the big issue with the statement, but it shows the thing had no redeeming value.

Posted by: denise at December 12, 2002 08:39 AM

Cheap Shot Alert:

Have you noticed that nearly all Republicans who embarrass the party with regards to race relatiions tend to be former Democrats? At least that seems to be the case in the south.

Posted by: Russ Goble at December 12, 2002 08:44 AM

Worth noting when you say that Lott is an albatross, "like Gingrich", you are totally correct, with one difference.

Gingrich engineered the '94 GOP seizure of the House, and the Contract With America. In that, at least we could point at that as something Gingrich earned a lot of points and respect for. Such a person you sometimes suck it up and go to bat for, simply because you owe it to them.

So what the hell do we owe Trent Lott? Can anyone tell me, for my own knowledge even if you don't support him, what I should write in his 'credit' column? His pre-2001 Majority Leadership was decidedly mediocre, I don't see any winning gambles or courageous stands to speak of, and he completely mis-handled Jeffords ('course that was feally Jeffords doing, but still...).

So basically, why has Trent Lott earned my support, enough so to pay the devastating price we now have to pay to be "loyal to one of our own"?

Begone, Lott.

And I very much disagree with both Stephen's and Charles at LGF decision to back burner this. I am talking with the unwashed masses out here, some black, many who would be ripe for the kind of 2004 re-alignment the GOP is hoping for. It is within our grasp, and Lott WILL kill it. HE WILL KILL IT! We have to do something, or the GOP will blow it..... AGAIN!

Posted by: Andrew X at December 12, 2002 10:47 AM

The irony of Democrats trying to make political hay out of this gaffe is rich.

Lott's comments highlight an aspect of Democratic Party history that the Democrats would rather not be remembered. The Democratic Party, until the mid 1960s, was the home of hard core segregationists. Pres. Johnson got the 1964 Civil Rights Bill passed against strong opposition from within his own party, with the help of Everett Dirksen and Senate Republicans. By the end of the decade, however, the Democratic party was moving increasingly leftward, so the Dixiecrats had no natural home.

If I recall correctly, it was in the 1968 election that the Republican Party first tried a 'southern strategy'. It was an appeal to conservative white southerners to regard the Republican party, with its traditional values, as their natural home.

The Democratic Party in the late 1940s was strange. Henry Wallace lefties, Dixiecrat racists, trade Unionists. I'm intrigued why Truman pursued such an integrationist course.

Posted by: ronnie schreiber at December 12, 2002 11:27 AM