“Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
I don’t understand why anyone – Republican, Democrat, or other – would get so upset over such a silly statement as Lott’s. I mean, one little comment, meant to honor a colleague, using ill-chosen wording, and suddenly everything he’s done is forgotten and his career is over? When did people get so hugely sensitive? It’s just sad.
By the way, I’m not a Republican, I’m pretty sure I’ve never voted for a Republican, I have no love for Republicans, I just think this thing is being blown way, way out of proportion.
Lott might keep away a lot of conservative pressure to step down from his majority leader position by letting it be known that if the pressure becomes too great, he will resign from the Senate altogether — leaving his Senate seat to be filled by Mississippi’s democratic governor.
If that were the case, Roadfood – one ill-advised statement – the brouhaha wouldn’t be justified. But Lott has a history of sneaking up to stand next to racist organizations, and then running away when people notice. He’s been doing this his whole career. The remarks he made were obviously “code,” i.e., my extremist followers will recognize what I’m talking about, but there isn’t anything truly damning if you just look at the words on the page. You have to take it in context of the man’s whole career and outlook. (Example, IIRC, when he was in college, he fought to continue the exclusion of blacks from his dormitory.)
This brings me back to elucidator’s questions about what is really going on. I mean, folks like William Bennett made clear what Lott needed to do and say. Even Koko the talking gorilla could have done better. I only got to see a few minutes, since it was dinner time here. What I saw was stunning: he said that he didn’t support MLK’s birthday as a federal holiday because there are already too many holidays (and he gave a stat regarding costs - stats always help with contrition!), but he did put forth something about Juneteenth as a holiday, and he also worked to get a bust placed somewhere. Wow, if I wasn’t so suspicious, I’d say Christmas came early. I have to admit that it was beautiful to watch the once and future Majority Leader shit himself. Again.
I found what I think is the entire text of today’s speech:
Like I thought, he never offers an explanation to what problems would have been avoided by electing Strom.
How does he expect to convince people he’s not a racist without explaining **how **his comments were not racist? Simply saying “they were not racist” is not enough, he has to give a non-racist interpretation to be convincing.
I’m hearing some talk about censure and backing off the hue and cry for removal. There is little that would make the Democrats happier than seeing Ol’ Trent continue in office with that albatross hung around his neck. Maybe Democrat political manipulators see keeping Trent in the spot light where every body can see him as a great way to stimulate Black, Latino and Asian voters by beating them over the head and shoulders with Senator Lott of Mississippi as the secret face of the Republican Party.
I know. It’s an interesting world we live in. You can do whatever you want. You can do terrible and indefensive things, but God help you if you say the wrong thing.
I mean the dinner was honoring Strom Thurmond.
The guy ran for President on a platform of segregation
WTF?
If he’s so bad and terrible why were they honoring him in the first place?
What was Lott supposed to say:
“Well he’s a hundred years old, so I guess we better honor him just for that fact, and I’d like to add that he’s not half the horrible bigot he used to be!”
But Thurmond has since repudiated his past segregationist positions. in public. And his record of the last few years makes it pretty clear that his repudiation was honest.
Lott, on the other hand, was praising something that Thurmond did that Thurmond himself has said was wrong.
Actually Lott wasn’t specific. He said if the rest of the Country had followed Mississippi’s lead (and voted for Strom) then the country wouldn’t have had a lot of the problems that it had.
He doesn’t specifically refer to what problems.
It seems to me that people are assuming that Lott is endorsing Strom’s prerepudiation stance, but that really wasn’t what he said.
I guess the rule seems to be you can honor Thurmond as long as you are only referring to the post-repudiation Strom, but if you express amicable sentiments for pre-repudiation Strom you’re in deep shit.
He should have just called him a “turdburgler.” That’s always safe.
Good argument, JDM. Finally somebody pointed out that the Lincoln/GOP argument is absolute trash.
Lincoln may have been a Republican, but he sure would not approve of segregation. After all, he was the guy who made the freedom of slaves possible. The Republicans of the 1800s were not Trent Lott Republicans. This guy is so backwards. The Senate majority leader of the United States of America favors segregation? I think we still have a long way to go before we can really brag about being diverse or the “melting pot.”
I do think that the media is exploiting this situation for ratings, though. They have nothing else better to sensationalize.
“What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races.”
Abraham Lincoln, “Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas 1897”, page 118
Well, of course he doesn’t. Even he’s not stupid enough to make explicitly racist statements. Hell, Politicians rarely talk about any position that they hold explicitly.
That’s the whole beauty of the “Southern Strategy”: You use code words that convey to the racists that you are one of them, but can be plausibly denied if non-racists question you. The mainstream tolerance of overt racism is pretty minimal these days. So most racists have of necessisity learned to either not speak of it or to speak in code. The don’t fault their politicians for not being overt so long as they deliver the goods
The southern strategy only works for the Reps if they give actual racists power within the party, if it were only lip service, then it wouldn’t work. This time, the coded message was a bit too unsubtle, and now we know that Lott is one of the token racists in the Republican party. (We being you, I’ve known for some time)
Lott’s problem here is that he left himself without plausible deniabily in this case. There’s no reasonable interpretation of his statement that doesn’t amount to praise of segregation. And it clearly isn’t a misstatement because a) it was part of a prepared statement, and b) he used the exact same words 20 years ago at a Reagan rally. (probably why he though it was safe code)
It’s been an open secret that the republican party was the one that the racists could call home for decades now, but if they are too open about it, then they loose the support of non-racist white swing voters.
Bush, who is (i believe) genuinely not a racist did pretty well with them, but he will do less well if it becomes clear to the soccer moms that a vote for a republican is an objectively pro-racist vote. The whole point of trotting out all of the people of color in the 2000 Republican convention wasn’t to convince blacks to vote for him as it was to convince non-racist whites that the tolerance for racism of the republican party wasn’t going to be allowed under Bush.
This why Bush had do criticise Lott once the public outcry became loud enough. But, when push comes to shove, it turns out that Bush will tolerate a racist being the number 2 man in the party. so long as he gives lip service to the non-racist mainstream.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. So long as the racists in the republican party could be recognised only by their supporters and not by the general population, it made sense to keep them. They help bring in votes more than they hurt. But Lott has been unmasked, if he gets kicked out, then the Republicans get some serious cred on the racism issue, but could loose control of the Senate. (Lott has threatened to resign if he looses the leadership position, and a democratic governer would choose his replacement).
But what else could he possibly have meant? I’d really like to know. In fact I think we’d all like to hear him say “I didn’t mean to suggest that I endorse segregation. What I meant was_______________.” Can you fill in the blank for us?
I think Lott may be in the habit of using coded messages when speaking to racist audiences in Mississippi. That doesn’t necessarily imply that he means it. It’s what certain audiences liked to hear. He’s on record as having used this phrase once before. My guess is that he’s used it other times as well, but there happens to be no record.
So, he was praising Strom Thurmond, and the phrase slipped out in front of the wrong audience and on videotape. Serves him right.
