Something occurred to me this morning. If Lott is so terribly guilty for agreeing with Thurmond’s run for the presidency, how come Thurmond isn’t ten times guiltier for actually running with that platform?
The NAACP is calling for Lott to step down (http://www.naacp.org/news/releases/lott121002.shtml) - how come they didn’t routinely call for Thurmond to step down? I know they would have loved it if he had, and they organized a successful boycott of his state, but that wasn’t because of Thurmond himself, it was over the SC state flag.
Oh, he was at one time. He and George Wallace and Orville Faubus epitomized resistence to integration. However, Thurmond renounced his past beliefs and apologized for them many years ago. He has an integrated staff and IIRC sent one of his children to an integrated private school.
I’m uncomfortable with calling for Lott to step down. Who would replace him? Daschle is not stupid. He has to have considered who he might have to work with if Lott were replaced. The fact that he lapped up the apology says something. It’s not worth it.
I am so profoundly grateful that I don’t live in South Carolina. I don’t care if the man made a complete 180 degree road-to-Damascas metamorphosis and is now so cool that he has lunch dates with Angela Davis and considers Jacob Lawrence to be his all-time favorite artist; Strom will forever be associated in my mind with American racism in its fulminating heyday. Be it right or wrong, I don’t think I’m the only who makes this association, either. The fact that South Carolinians repeatedly put this man in the senate to represent them is about as appalling as the attachment a great many of them have towards their state flag. And I don’t think those two things lack a correlation.
Here’s a copy of the 1948 ballot. Note that it explicitly states that a vote for Truman means that you’re supporting anti-lynching (!!!) and anti-segregation proposals.
Lott’s had plenty of time and opportunities to remove his foot from his mouth and he’s squandered them- “I’m sorry that you misinterpreted what I meant” is a piss-poor apology. I don’t think he will (or should) get a pass this time.
The controversy isn’t about saying nice things about a former segregationist. No one’s criticizing Bob Dole, who spoke right before Lott and said plenty of complimentary things about Thurmond. The problem with Lott’s statement is that he was endorsing Thurmond’s views from 50 years ago.
The SC state flag was not the issue in the flag controversy. It was that the Confederate battle flag was being flown atop the state capitol, along with the US and state flags.
The state flag features a blue background with a white palmetto tree and crescent moon.
LC:Did people really vote for Reagan because he would reduce the deficit?
You betcha, youngster. IIRC it was Reagan’s first campaign that really put into circulation the phrase “tax-and-spend liberals”. And he stumped for a balanced budget amendment too. Reagan so ably exploited the popular association of conservatives with fiscal-responsibility policies that it took a while for most people to notice that he wasn’t practicing anything like what he was preaching.
It clearly was not an accidental off-the-cuff remark as it was prefaced by something on the lines of “Mississippi voted for him when he ran for president and I am a proud Miss’ian…” and then he went on to say how if other states had voted too…
Sounds deliberate enough to me. But, the thing is, I am not familiar what the full platform of the States’ Rights party was. Was it mainly based on continuing segregation or were there other equal or more important issues involving states rights?
In the clip in the TSG, Thurmond says, “…these damnable proposals he [the president] has recommended under the guise of so-called civil rights…” and “…oppose such a program and if they don’t the next thing will be a totalitarian state in these United States”
It just is not fully clear to me what these sentences imply.
(Also, the definition of pork appears illegal to me. How did he manage such illegal patronage?)
Trent Lott should be removed from any power in the senate. He shouldn’t be majority leader. He shouldn’t have any committee chairmanships or anything else. He should be treated as a nonperson. It is up to the people of Mississippi to do with this dipshit asshole what they will, they elected him. There is no reason for the rest of us to have him in a position to dictate to the rest of us.
