The Dish

And the critical sign is, as Josh Marshall notes, he just “absolutely” endorsed affirmative action. He is the worst of all possible worlds: once a devotee of the old racism; now an enthusiast for the new racism.

Some of the sanctimony is now beginning to bug me. I’m second to few in believing that Trent Lott should step down as SML. But that doesn’t mean I like the racial politics of the current Democratic Party. In fact, the way some far-left Democrats use race is no less repulsive than the way some far-right Republicans do. The equation of opposition to affirmative action or hate-crime laws or any other number of leftist policies with racism strikes me as a massively cheap shot. (I was on WBUR last night and paleo-lib Jack Beatty went straight to that knee-jerk point. Grrrr.) And the blithe assumption of moral superiority is equally galling. None of my criticism of Lott should therefore be read as in any way an endorsement of the Democratic alternative. In fact, getting rid of Lott is a critical step in defeating the Democratic strategy on race. The Dems take black votes for granted, which is bad for them and worse for blacks; they too easily acquiesce to the biggest race-baiters in the business; they treat blacks too often as a group rather than as individuals. And the monolithic black support for the Democrats is one of the primary impediments to black progress in this country. But the point is Lott keeps this system alive. I agree with Mona Charen that “the day Democrats fail to secure 80 percent or 90 percent of the black vote, they cease to exist as a major party. Or at least, they would be forced significantly to remake themselves as a party.” If that happened, we’d make real racial progress in this country. Lott, whether he likes it or not, is a huge impediment to that progress. That’s why he’s got to go. And why Bill Frist, rather than Don Nickles, should replace him.

LOTT’S BLACK VOTE: So what is it? I’ve read anything from 5 percent to Dick Morris’s alleged 30 percent. I emailed Michael Barone, who knows everything. Here’s what his Almanac of American politics says:

The 2000 VNS exit poll shows Lott carrying whites 88%-9% and losing blacks 88%-10%, but the latter figure seems dubious. He carried Hinds County, which is 61% black, with 51% of the vote, and ran even in the black-majority Delta; his efforts to win black Mississippians’ votes seem to have borne some fruit.

But not much. Michael adds: “Hinds County includes Jackson, the state’s largest city. It’s interesting that the white vote was (admittedly by a statistically insignificant 1%) more one-sided than the black vote. That probably hasn’t happened often anywhere since 1972 or so.” What’s interesting here in other words is how huge Lott’s white majority is. The black vote is probably a little over 10 percent. Given Lott’s seniority and shameless pork-barrel politicking, this doesn’t add up to a very convincing defense. And Dick Morris’s 30 percent is about as persuasive as the rest of his column.

IT’S GOT BEAGLE IN THERE SOMEWHERE: An Islamic dog-story. Couldn’t resist.

THOSE CHRISTMAS BLUES: My little nephew is making a theatrical debut this week. (He’s eight). In his nativity play, he’ll be playing the back end of a camel. I sent word that it’s best to start modestly. “I’m the hump too!” he insists.

THE IRAQ-AL QAEDA LINK: You all know what I think of the Guardian’s reflexive anti-Americanism. But this piece by Brian Whitaker makes a good point. Last week, the Washington Post ran a big page one story on administration leaks that there was a “credible report” of a nerve gas delivery from Iraq to al Qaeda. The piece was surrounded by as many hedges as an English meadow, but it was the lead story for a while. The next day, the Post followed up with a page 50 story in which Iraqi denials were accompanied by this administration statement:

A senior Bush administration official, commenting on The Post report, said U.S. intelligence had uncorroborated information that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda may have received a poisonous substance. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States did not know whether the material was nerve gas or whether the extremists were linked to the government of Saddam Hussein.

Credible report or uncorroborated information? Are we to assume it wasn’t true? It’s not as if this isn’t huge news, if valid. Or is the administration deliberately leaking false or unreliable information for political purposes? I know the al Qaeda-Saddam link may well be true but I don’t think it serves the White House’s purposes to cry wolf too often. Credibility is everything in this difficult pre-war period. And the administration’s just deteriorated.

YOU THOUGHT I WAS HARSH: Read Hitch go off on Kissinger, Lott and Law. Hitch, of course, can’t resist the old anti-Catholic smear of the pope as a “foreign potentate.” Honestly, Christopher. Where do you think you are, Belfast?

GAY ACTIVIST TO PRIEST: Yes, it happens. But not for much longer, I fear.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “Trivial as it may seem after a week of comedy-drama chez Blair, I thought I should probably mention that the United States might be dropping a nuclear bomb or two sometime soon. Nothing serious, you understand — neither the Prime Minister’s wife nor the Daily Mail have been informed — but America’s aperitif to war on Iraq runs something like this: if Saddam happens to think of deploying one of the chemical weapons he might (or might not) happen to possess, the Pentagon promises faithfully to respond with one of the dinky new nukes it is dying, by pure coincidence, to test.” – Ian Bell, in Scotland’s Sunday Herald.

David Frum laments he didn’t see the Gore decision coming. I wrote a piece that came out yesterday saying it looked likely. Check it out.

That would be a better headline for Dick Morris’s column this morning. It has nothing new, except an embarrassing attempt to argue that Lott is indistinguishable from John Lewis on the matter of civil rights. Oh, Dick, come off it. Then there’s this:

Let’s start with the fact that I have known Lott for 15 years and have had, perhaps, a hundred or more meetings with him. I got to know him better than any American politician other than Bill Clinton. He is no racist. There is not a racist bone in his body.

Translation: Lott has paid me an awful lot over the years to figure out how to use race and other issues effectively as an electoral tool while not getting caught. If he’s a racist, what does that say about me?

THE OTHER PARALLEL: John Scalzi makes an interesting point today:

Do I think Lott is a racist? Well, at the very least, I do suspect that Lott thinks of black people the way that conservative Republicans my age and slightly older think of gays and lesbians – that whole “why, this person seems agreeable enough, and look, I’m not even thinking about the fact he’s gay at all” sort of thing. The folks in this situation deal with gays by concentrating on the trivial matters at hand in front of them and desperately not thinking of that gay person in any other context – say, at home with their partners, slicing tomatoes for a salad or watching HBO or talking on the phone or having red-hot oral sex on the stairwell.- Replace “gay” with black” and you get an idea of where Lott is coming from. It’s sort of like being told not to think about a white elephant, and so of course that’s exactly what you do. “White Elephant,” of course, being oddly appropriate here.

I wonder if, in twenty years or so, another politician is going to come acropper because of blatant scorn for gay citizens, uttered in, say, the 1990s. Don Nickles, anyone?

I can’t help pondering their similarities. Essentially, they got left behind by history and by democracy. Law grew up in a church that was never challenged, that existed beyond serious criticism, that could get away with almost anything behind closed doors, its sins and peccadilloes hidden, above all, by loyal and deferent Catholics. Lott grew up in a culture in which segregation was eagerly embraced and rose through the Republican ranks without ever having to explicitly break with his past and its gentle blurring of cruel bigotry. Both men gained enormous power without much accountability. And they liked the club. They enjoyed its privileges. They came to feel affronted by the need even to explain.

THE WORLD MOVES ON: And then events conspired to tear the veil of civility and privilege from them and they found that no words, no apologies, no euphemisms could disguise what they had once believed and done. Law once believed that molesting children was no big deal. It could be covered up, hidden, its perpetrators treated as victims, its real victims treated as nuisances. Lott once believed that blacks could be kept legally separated from whites; he later saw this as a debatable proposition; he subsequently believed that he could somehow maintain this ancient conviction, wrap it in the gauze of collective amnesia, and refer to it obliquely in friendly contexts as a political signal to his base. But by the time Law and Lott had reached the heights of ecclesiastical and political power, the world had changed. The Church could not withstand the revelation that it had acquiesced in the rape of minors. It was too hideous a crime, too awful a betrayal of the Gospel for the hierarchy to deploy its now-tattered authority to deflect the criticism. Law couldn’t get around this simple, obvious unavoidable fact: that he was indirectly responsible for allowing the lives of countless children to be destroyed. Nothing could. Similarly, Lott couldn’t spin or finesse himself out of the stunningly obvious fact that he had once believed that blacks were simply inferior to whites, that they owed their rights to white forbearance, that they should be forever second-class citizens. He may, in his heart of hearts, have come to disbelieve this, as Law must surely now understand the horror of child abuse. Yet somehow their psyches and souls couldn’t move fast enough. They could say the right words, but their records showed something else. Soon, they became symbols of something deeply wrong with two institutions – the Catholic Church and the Republican Party. And their removal became essential for both institutions to recover. But both didn’t go easily. Law clung to power until he was the leader of no-one, and the servant of an ailing pontiff alone. Lott is still clinging. But he is politically dead. This is therefore not the time for gloating or personal condemnation. We cannot judge the heart of either man. But we can hope that the causes they represented – the body of Christ and the party of Lincoln – will be the stronger for their departure.

GORE MAKES THE RIGHT CALL: What a relief. Sometimes I’ve felt that, throughout Al Gore’s career, he found politics a duty rather than a love. And then ambition brought its own demands. His decision to get out now is not just personally sane, it’s politically smart. We all know he would have lost. Now he’s spared us the agony of watching it happen all over again. John Ellis reviews the future prospects for the Democratic field here. By the way, Adam Nagourney of the Times completely owned this scoop. When left alone by Raines, he always produces great stuff.

THE BEST TIMES CORRECTION YET: I’m sorry, but this one is straight out of Monty Python. I found it via the blogger, Powerline. Here it is:

An article on Nov. 10 about animal rights referred erroneously to an island in the Indian Ocean and to events there involving goats and endangered giant sea sparrows that could possibly lead to the killing of goats by environmental groups. Wrightson Island does not exist; both the island and the events are hypothetical figments from a book (also mentioned in the article), ”Beginning Again,” by David Ehrenfeld. No giant sea sparrow is known to be endangered by the eating habits of goats.

Well, that’s a relief.

PLEDGE WEEK UPDATE: Robert tells me it’s been a huge success, but it will take till mid-week to arrive at a final accounting. As soon as we have it nailed down, I’ll let you know exactly how much we raised.

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.