This speech is a watershed. Here’s the critical passage that appeared early in the speech and not as an after-thought or an aside:
We must also rise to a second challenge facing our country. This great and prosperous land must become a single nation of justice and opportunity. We must continue our advance toward full equality for every citizen, which demands the guarantee of civil rights for all. (Applause.) Any suggestion that the segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive, and it is wrong.
Recent comments – recent comments by Senator Lott do not reflect the spirit of our country. He has apologized, and rightly so. Every day our nation was segregated was a day that America was unfaithful to our founding ideals. And the founding ideals of our nation and, in fact, the founding ideals of the political party I represent was, and remains today, the equal dignity and equal rights of every American.
And so the – and this is the principle that guides my administration. We will not, and we must not, rest until every person of every race believes in the promise of America because they see it in their own eyes, with their own eyes, and they live it and feel it in their own lives.
The prelude to those passages was a recognition that we are at war. And I think that’s important. African-Americans play a disproportionate role in defending all of us from the evil out there. For the Senate Majority Leader to wax nostalgic about Jim Crow while these people are laying their lives on the line is unconscionable. With this speech, Bush shifts the center of gravity in the Republican Party away from its Dixiecrat-wannabe faction. I cannot see how Lott can survive now.
The Dish 