Just when the GOP partisans on the board had finished telling us how the party had repudiated its segregationists and other racists, they put Trent Lott back in the leadership. His next cover photo in the Council of Conservative Citizens newsletter (remember them? The KKK without hoods?) will no doubt be on the stands next month.
So what the hell were they thinking? That this election was just a hiccup, that their base is solidly behind them and understands the wink-and-a-nod game? Perhaps that, freed from the responsibilities that go along with absolute power, they can get back to the insiders’ club style of politics, where only one’s standing with one’s fellow club members matters, not the views of the peasantry that will get back to voting loyally once they get this war-anger business out of their systems? Or is this simple cluelessness, not arrogance? I would hate to think Lott is actually one of the best and brightest of the remaining bunch in the Senate Republican Caucus, but maybe he is.
You know, when you lose something that doesn’t mean that you need to go all the way and commit suicide in your despair. The Republicans, with this appointment to their leadership, seem intent on committing institutional suicide for at least a generation.
Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott… didn’t they learn a damn thing?
My guess would be that Lott will have no specific effect on the situation. He had to step down because of public clamor, but I suspect that it had more to do with the perceptions of the party that they had been embarrassed than because anyone in the party felt he was behaving poorly in the job. As long as he makes no new statemewnts that can be tied back to the era of Jim Crow, there will be no uproar. And as the minority party leader, he will not be in the daily spotlight to make any serious blunders. If he had sufficient support within the party by those who felt that he was competent to plan strategy, meet with the senior members of the majority, and discipline the members of his own party, then he will probably trundle along on a daily basis just getting done the administrative work to which he has been chosen to perform while making sufficient noises that the Democrats have ruined GWB’s specatcular vision for the liberation of Iraq and the elimination of the “death tax” (on the .00001%* of the population who paid it).
(My made up number to represent the tiny fraction of people who are actually affected by inheritance taxes.)
I don’t think it’s terribly significant. One comment made during a speech shouldn’t condemn anyone to being an outcast, unless of course you’re John Kerry. The average guy doesn’t really give a rip about the Senate party leadership, he’s more interested in what the Senate actually does. I suspect the actions taken by the Senate with Lott as Minority Leader would be pretty much the same as they would be without him at that post.
And if it’s any consolation whatsoever, the vote was 25-24. While he got it, it seems that there are any number of Republicans who are either uncomfortable with the idea, or more comfortable with someone else.
Trent “we gotta reform them torts” Lott is currently one of thousands of people suing his insurance company over whether his house was demolished by wind and then flooded or flooded and then demolished by wind.
Considering the reason Lott was disgraced in the first place, am I really the first one in this thread to point out the humor in his new title? I mean, he’s the minority whip.
Is he? Minority whip and minority leader are two different posts. I assumed Lott had been chosen for the latter, but the linked article in the OP doesn’t make that clear.
