Category: Old Dish

No, he can’t survive.

NEWSWEEK’S FREUDIAN SLIP: “Trent Lott had just finished his fourth, and most fulsome, apologia for having praised Strom Thurmond’s stridently segregationist presidential campaign of 1948.” – Newsweek, today. A common mistake. From the dictionary:

1.tOffensively flattering or insincere. See Synonyms at unctuous.
2.tOffensive to the taste or sensibilities.

But this time, completely on target.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE WATCH: “In 1999, Mr. Lott wrote to the Anti-Defamation League that he “could never support – or seek support from – a group that disdained or demeaned” people because of their race. “I grew up in a home where you didn’t treat people that way, and you didn’t stand with anyone foolish or cruel enough to do so,” he said… Some time later, Mr. Harkey said, he received a letter from a woman who told him that if he did not publish her letter it would prove “you are truly an integrationist and I hope you not only get a hole through your office door but through your stupid head.” It was signed Iona W. Lott – Mr. Lott’s mother. “I called her, asked if she’d sent it to me, and she said she certainly had sent it to me and she meant every word,” said Mr. Harkey, now 84.” – from the New York Times today.

Rumors are swirling about an alleged threat from Trent Lott to resign from the Senate altogether if Bush pushed him out. The Washington Post picks up on stories now circulating in Washington and beyond:

Yet, in a sign of the Lott camp’s concerns, some allies are quietly suggesting to GOP senators that Lott might resign from the Senate if he is forced out as leader, a move that could jeopardize the party’s one-seat majority. Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove (D) presumably would appoint a Democrat to replace Lott, they note. That would leave the Senate evenly split, enabling Democrats to regain the majority if they could persuade a moderate Republican to switch parties. A source close to Lott dismissed the scenario, saying, “it would be a cold day before Trent Lott gives his seat to a Democrat governor.”

Wasn’t there an ice-storm recently across much of the South?

NOW, THE NEW YORK POST: “Yesterday, Lott came out a fourth time. Finally, he said segregation was ‘wrong and immoral’ and a ‘stain on the nation’s soul.’
The average person would have thought to say that the first time he apologized.
Could it be that it took Lott so long because he’s never been forced to truly confront the horror of the Jim Crow laws of his youth? Could it be, in other words, that, in his heart of hearts, he actually believes what he said?” – from their editorial calling on Trent Lott to resign as SML.

A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR CONSERVATIVES: Ignore Will Saletan’s silly over-reach. (Don’t ignore Josh Chafetz’s fisking of it though.) The lesson of this past week is how the heart of modern conservatism has moved on. The Washington Post tells it straight today:

The critique from the right is far more threatening to Lott’s political future than the attacks of Democrats and liberals, which in many respects serve to reinforce support for Lott within the GOP.
“This Lott story has continued primarily because of criticism from conservatives,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster based in Atlanta. “If the only people raising doubts were Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, this story would have died of its own weight several days ago. It’s the anguish from conservatives that has kept the story going. That tells me there are a lot of conservatives and conservative Republicans who truly want the party to be inclusive and truly want to reach out.”

Yep. Which is why this story could still end up as a major victory for the Republican Party. It’s up to you, Senators. Your reputation is now at stake too.

Brink Lindsey has gone looking at the website of Trent Lott’s “Council of Conservative Citizens,” the group he once addressed by saying that “the people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy.” Here’s their current defense of Lott:

Sad, sicko raciopaths rule the day, dear friends, and they roil about like maggots in a garbage can eating the flesh of aracial whites who are too stupid to even know they’re being repressed and exterminated by those who hate all whites and who seek high profile examples such as Trent Lott to condemn any expressions of white identity. And, the whites who have been weakened by years of trying not to be white, lest any non-white people be offended by their whiteness and white ways, go happily to their genocide rather than standing up and demanding the right to their own self-determination and identity.

Poison.

As one reader puts it:

For God’s sake, Condi Rice has more influence and power than Maxine Waters could ever dream, but we’ll still be the ones who want to keep black folks down! How can any Republican argue for something sensible like school vouchers to bring kids out of poverty when everyone thinks you’re only saying it for show?

This is a great great day for Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and all the other race-baiters on the left. Trent Lott’s survival has given them ammunition for years.

I’m still reeling from watching Trent Lott’s bumptious, smug, self-congratulatory self-defense. Leaving aside his noxious past, his sheer inability to convey any genuine remorse is reason alone to justify his removal from his position. His “apology” was formulaic, cheery, rote and unpersuasive. I still don’t think he acknowledges the gravity of what he said over a week ago. I don’t think he understands the central place of the civil rights movement in the construction of this country’s modern existence. I don’t think he even faintly fits into a Party of Lincoln. His pugnacious tone, his craven invocation of his working class past as somehow something that innoculates him from criticism, his lack of solemness, his grinning and laughing in the question and answer session indicates to me that he still doesn’t get it – and he never will. He asks us to forgive him. That is not the issue. He says he’s not a racist: “I’m not about to resign for an accusation for something I’m not.” Again, not the issue. I do not know and cannot know what Lott believes in his heart. I do know what he has said and done in the past. This was not a one-off gaffe. It was part of a pattern of consistently voting and speaking as if he did indeed regret desegregation. His statement last week was damaging precisely because it makes more sense of Lott’s career in racial matters than any other plausible explanation. As long as he remains Senate Majority Leader for the Republicans, the G.O.P. will therefore have little or no credibility on racial issues – or any other civil rights issues. And they won’t deserve to. Ultimately the responsibility for this debacle will lie with the president. His rebuke was welcome. But those who suspect it was window dressing – a means not to be rid of Lott but to give him cover to continue – will be very hard to refute. In my view, this performance has turned a terrible situation for the GOP into a genuine crisis. It reminds every non-partisan supporter of the GOP and many partisan Republicans the truly dark side of conservatism. You can’t acquiesce to these people; you can’t appease them. Leaving them in power – as spokespeople for a party allegedly trying to be inclusive – is tantamount to endorsing them. Trent Lott must go. Now more than ever.

Check out Jake Tapper’s piece on Lott’s close friendship with a proud segregationist, Richard Barrett, who’s alarmed by Lott’s apparent apologies:

And Barrett remembers that November 1994 night, right after Lott was reelected to his second Senate term when, “at his victory celebration, at the Coliseum Ramada Inn, Trent entered the hall and the first person he went up to shake hands with and greet was me. He called me by my name and was very affable.” But has Lott ever specifically talked to Barrett about supporting segregation? Barrett finds the question naive. “Does Jesse Jackson talk to Al Sharpton abut integration?” he asks. “Do they have to? Is there some split in the black caucus on that issue? There is certainly no split in Mississippi on segregation. Mississippi is still the solid South.” Barrett spent a lot of time on the phone Wednesday night with close advisors to Lott, he says. “We’re all like one big happy family in Mississippi. We’re the heart of Dixie. I’ve certainly never heard him say anything in favor of integration, let me put it to you that way.”… Barrett has harsh words for President Bush’s Thursday rebuke of Lott. “Sen. Lott was right” in his original comments, Barrett says. “Integration is immoral and should also be illegal.” Barrett thinks that whatever he’s saying now, Lott still believes that in his “heart of hearts.” What about Bush? “His heart of hearts has been addled by his drug-abused brain,” Barrett says.

More and more of this stuff is now bound to emerge. Yet Lott wants to hang on. How much more damage does he want to do to the country and to his party?

Here’s a reflection with which I completely concur. How sad it came to this. How important that there has been some tiny measure of accountability. How important this resignation is for the morale of all the good priests out there who have been horribly tarred and demoralized by this saga.

If Drudge is right and Trent Lott makes yet another apology this afternoon, we’re entering the Twilight Zone. If all you’ve got is Sean Hannity and Pat Buchanan in your corner, and a damning silence from your colleagues, and a public denunciation from your own president, a fifth apology is simply not good enough. If Lott perseveres, he will be serving posthumously as Senate Majority Leader. He will be handing the Democrats a dream issue. The hard left position, that the GOP is a party of racists and closet racists and their enablers, will be given wider credibility. The New York Times spin is already trying to credit liberals – rather than many conservatives – with campaigning for Lott’s departure. I don’t know what the White House has been saying to Lott behind the scenes. But anything but asking him politely to step aside is not good enough. This is a pivotal moment for the GOP and the whole country is watching. The skeptics – who argue that Bush’s denunication was not genuine and will be followed by acquiescing to Lott’s leadership – will gain adherents. And many more centrist Republicans – and Southern Republicans – will be crushed that this relic of a terrible legacy has been allowed to live another day. This isn’t something that can be smoothed over. Lott must go.

What on earth does Trent Lott do now? A reader rightly points out that yesterday’s presidential scolding is a bigger deal than Sister Souljah. Ms Souljah was a no-good hip-hop fifteen minutes. Trent Lott is the Republican leader in the Senate. And his own president – almost entirely responsible for returning Lott to his position in the first place – has just chewed him out in the most public way. Surely Lott must go. But how? Another reader presents this awful scenario:

Lott quits (per your howling) in a huff. Not just the Maj Leader, but the whole shootin’ match. Mississippi’s Democratic governor appoints a Democratic senator, who joins with li’l Tommie D. and the boyz to promise Lincoln Chafee the world and a box of crackers. Final score 49-49-2, Daschle with the gavel, Bush gone in ’04. Who’s actually setting the party back, Andrew?

Anything’s possible. But it would turn his disgrace into a calamity for him. What would he do with his life? Lobby? After stabbing his president and party in the chest? It would be an act of spectacular bitterness and narcissism (which is why it’s not entirely impossible). But I don’t get the subsequent point. The issue here is not the short-term advantages for the Republican Party. The issue here is the soul of the Republican Party. When it comes to having a Dixiecrat who publicly waxes nostalgic for Jim Crow as a leader of that party, the damage is far, far greater than any short-term setback. If Lott – or his cronies – play such a resignation card, Bush should and would call his bluff. But I think Bush sees the bigger picture here. The president, after all, did an amazing and important thing yesterday. He rebuked a major figure in his own party and recast conservatism quite clearly and radically toward racial inclusion and tolerance:

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.

Put that in Bartletts now. Purging the party of the sentiments expressed by Lott is a critical part of the process toward making the modern GOP truly an inheritor of Lincoln’s promise. The fate of any vain and bitter individual should be secondary to that great initiative.

MORE ON LOTT: Let’s recap a tiny bit. He fought integration of his college fraternity; he has hobnobbed with white supremacists; he submitted an amicus brief defending Bob Jones University’s right to prohibit inter-racial dating; he has twice regretted the fact that Strom Thurmond didn’t win the 1948 presidential election on an explicitly segregationist platform; he voted against the Voting Rights Act extension in 1982; in 1983 he voted against the Martin Luther King Jr holiday; last year, he cast the only vote against the confirmation of Judge Roger Gregory, the first black judge ever seated on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In these last three instances, even Strom Thurmond voted the other way. I don’t know. What do you think? Again, much of this was already well known about him. (I’ve omitted his equation of homosexuality with a compulsion to steal things. It’s still legit to demonize gay people and get away with it.) And if the white voters of Mississippi want to keep electing him, that’s their business. (He got a paltry 5 percent of the black vote last time around). But being a leader of the Republican Party is not a right; it’s a privilege. Surely, Lott has now shown himself to be unworthy of that privilege. So far, no other Republican Senator has dared to express his or her dismay at the prospect of being led by such a political albatross. It’s time they did. Where are you, John McCain?

ONE LAST PITCH: You’ve got another day or so to help us make our target for making this site financially viable. You’ve heard me before so I’ll cede to a reader on why it’s important to keep the blogosphere running. This week in particular:

What is amazing is how many articles are now popping up saying “oh, yeah, he also said this in 1983.” “Look what he said in 1981.” “In 1992 he said the following about Bob Jones.” “In 1978 he did this.” And so on. The thing is that these are not new stories! These have been around – Trent’s reputation has probably been known for some time. But nothing sustained has ever happened, even though quite a few people have probably known very well that one of the more powerful Senators was a segregationist in his heart.
But this story gets out on the blogs – I think you and Josh Marshall have been leading the discussion – and now it is impossible to stop. The blogs give legitimacy to the other papers. They create the momentum, and the big boys can jump on. Do you think that the NY Times would be running articles on this if InstaPundit had not? The research that the blogs have dedicated to this story has been amazing – every hour, someone has an excellent point to make about Lott, and every blog point is another drip in the bucket, so to speak. I have been a fan of blogs for a while now, but I have not seen a story happen around the edges of the major media like this one has. Strangely, this could be a watershed moment for the world of blogging. Not because they have done everything in the story, but because they sustained the momentum when the major dailies could not, or would not.

I think he’s onto something. Just compare the blogs’ coverage with the New York Times. We can’t replace the big media. But we can light fires and keep them going. That matters. And you can help keep it going. Please, please do. Click here to pay for this blog’s future.

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.