Black Caucus denounces Lott: Members of the Congressional Black Caucus rejected Senate Republican leader Trent Lott's apology for saying that America would have been better off if Strom Thurmond had won the presidency in 1948, when he ran as a segregationist and won four states. [....] “HIS REMARKS require minimally a much larger apology ... a meeting with the Black Caucus ... and whatever else the caucus may decide,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, said Tuesday.
You know ... don't get me wrong. I fully believe that Lott is a spectacularly racist ass. But frankly, he owes the Black Caucus nothing whatoever, and they should have no voice -- as a caucus -- in deciding anything. Frankly, the man is fully and legally entitled to be the Leading Racist Ass in Congress. And from a political point of view, I want to keep him there, being the racist ass that he is, and being the leader of the Republican caucus, and letting that be the face of the Republican party. Maybe that'll get people to stir their stumps and vote next election -- either to punt the Republicans altogether, or to vote into office those who may actually believe in compassionate conservatism. (At the moment, it seems to consist of a "rob from poor to give to the rich" philosophy. But I digress.)
Lott's faux-pas has even sent some of the conservatives into a tizzy:
Vacant Lott: The GOP and the Ghosts of Mississippi.: Can George W. Bush and the Republican party really afford to have Trent Lott (R., Miss.) be its face in the United States Senate? The question has to be pondered as the wannabe Majority Leader tries to dig himself out of his latest mess. [...] From the Mississippi State Democratic party's official sample ballot for the 1948 election, here's some of the "problems" that Mississippians feared: "A vote for Truman electors is a direct order to our Congressmen and Senators from Mississippi to vote for passage of Truman's so-called civil rights program in the next Congress. This means the vicious…anti-poll tax, anti-lynching and anti-segregation proposals will become the law of the land and our way of life in the South will be gone forever."
Perhaps Sen. Lott should ask Alabama-born Condoleezza Rice — whose childhood friends were killed in a church bombing — if she believes her life would have been better if Strom Thurmond had become president.
An interestingly savage piece, for the National Review. (I can't imagine Rice allowing herself to be cornered into making any statement whatsoever about Lott, all things considered.) The article also details Lott's past "misstatements" on similar topics.
Maxine Waters even took on Daschle, whose response to the whole thing, while more or less in the spirit of compromise (or something) was not one of his politically more bright moments of the recent past. (Really, why couldn't the man have just shut the hell up? Why would he have said anything at all to Lott about it? The man is the OPPOSITION, for heaven's sake! DON'T HELP.)
While most of those who spoke at the news conference directed their fire at Lott, Rep. Maxine Waters expanded the issue beyond Lott's words to the reaction of Sen. Tom Daschle and other Democratic leaders. On Monday, Daschle seemed to give Lott a measure of absolution when he told reporters that, "Senator Lott, in my conversation with him this morning, explained that that wasn't how he meant them to be interpreted. I accept that. There are a lot of times when he and I go to the microphone, would like to say things we meant to say differently, and I'm sure this is one of those cases for him, as well."
"I think that Mr. Daschle moved too quickly to explain Mr. Lott," Waters said today. "I consider that this is a Democratic party issue, and to the degree that the Democratic party understands that it must relate to the concerns of African Americans, they will pause and take into consideration what message this and other kinds of statements like this are sending into the African American community. It is not enough to simply defend or to explain these kinds of statements and then at election time talk about why black Americans should turn out in large numbers. So we've got some work to do."
Well, if Daschle had kept his mouth shut, it wouldn't have been any sort of Democratic party issue, and wouldn't have needed to be.
Tragically, grievously, and most unfortunately ... NR has a certain point when it talks about the pass that Clinton got for doing pretty much the same thing:
back on May 5, 1993, in what the Washington Post characterized as a "... moving 88th birthday ceremony for former senator William Fulbright, President Clinton last night bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on the man he described as a visionary humanitarian, a steadfast supporter of the values of education, and 'my mentor.'" Clinton added, "It doesn't take long to live a life. He made the best of his, and helped us to have a better chance to make the best of ours.…The American political system produced this remarkable man, and my state did, and I'm real proud of it."
Of course, the man Clinton was praising, who he called his "mentor," who supposedly embraced utopian values and made the world a better place for everyone, was also a rabid segregationist.
In 1956, Fulbright was one of 19 senators who issued a statement entitled the "Southern Manifesto." This document condemned the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Its signers stated, among other things, that "We commend the motives of those States which have declared the intention to resist forced integration by any lawful means." They stated further, "We pledge ourselves to use all lawful means to bring about reversal of this decision which is contrary to the Constitution and to prevent the use of force in its implementation."
I hadn't known that about Fulbright. (I didn't actually know much of anything about him.) I wonder if Clinton did?
Posted by iain at December 10, 2002 05:04 PMComments
Fulbright was Clinton's "mentor". He knew all about him. In a letter in '58 Fulbright talked about the feasibility of sending "them niggers" back to africa. Fulbright was by far a larger racists then Strom.
