And just when the Republican Party was thinking that finally, FINALLY, they had emerged from the racial morass that Lott had led them into, and that they could continue recasting themselves as the kinder, gentler, compassionately conservative party ... they get to think again.
Charlotte Observer | 12/21/2002 | Ballenger apologizes for `stupid' remarks: Caught up in a national swirl over racially sensitive politics, U.S. Rep. Cass Ballenger apologized Friday for what he called "pretty stupid" comments about an African American colleague. Even as he did, an aide was painting over what some see as a symbol of racial insensitivity -- a black lawn jockey in Ballenger's front yard.
Ballenger, commenting this week about Senate Republican leader Trent Lott's troubles, told The Observer he had occasional "segregationist feelings" about Rep. Cynthia McKinney, a black Georgia Democrat known for her abrasiveness. He also called McKinney "a bitch."
I should imagine that Republican Party leaders took Ballenger into a room after that and yelled at him for a very long time indeed. It takes a very special sort of mental density to make a remark like that in the midst of someone else's problems caused by a considerably less direct comment of the same sort. To be sure, his remarks were particular, a commentary about one person and one person only. And to be sure, I should think a great many people have thought a great many impolite words about former Rep. McKinney. But most of them had better sense than to say them in an interview, for heaven's sake.
And we're not even getting into the idiocy of the lawn jockey thing.
Weirdly, this is the same sort of thing that happened the last time the Republican Party felt that it was on top of the world. During Bush I's second campaign for president, they unveiled themselves in all their intolerance and bigotry at their national convention, and they've never entirely recovered their reputation from that display. You'd think that the fact that it mobilized part of the Democrat's minority base, the fact that many people still think of them as a white elitist party would, at the least, make them considerably more careful in their public pronouncements and actions.
Apparently, judging from recent events, you'd be very wrong indeed.
I wonder if Ballenger gets to take up the remnants of the Apology Tour now, since Lott won't be needing to do it any more. Thankfully for Carolina, Ballenger doesn't actually have much position to lose.
(Purely a side note, a coda if you will, to l'affaire Lott: it seems that the man put himself into an impossible position. The Black Republicans were furious at him -- why? surely they knew what he was when they got in bed with him -- the Republican leadership was sincerely unhappy with him for ruining their facade of tolerance, and ... oh, yes ... it seems that many of the constituents who put him in office were furious that he was apologizing in the first place. To be sure, I do believe that Mr Pierce, as quoted in the article, is quite correct: Lott sold out his principles to try to keep his job. Mind, they were utterly reprehensible principles, and it didn't work, but that was what he did. And now he gets to be held in contempt by pretty much everyone. Basically, the perfect example of a lose-lose situation. [Intriguingly, so very many of the people who wanted to keep Lott in his position as long as they could then seemed to support Nickles. Makes one wonder just exactly what sort of person Nickles is.])
Posted by iain at December 22, 2002 02:00 AMComments
