Posted on 12/16/2002 9:50:28 AM PST by RightOnTheLeftCoast
There's an aspect of this Lott hurricane that hasn't been sufficiently explored.
To begin, recall the early donnybrook over Daschle's comments about talk radio? Let me refresh your memory:
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"I think we're in a different place because of the way politics has become such entertainment. We were just talking with some experts a couple of days ago about how if we're going to try to break through as Democrats, we have to have the same edge that Republicans do... we see it in foreign countries, and we think, 'Well, my God, how can this religious fundamentalism become so violent?' ...it's that same shrill rhetoric, it's that same shrill power that motivates. You know, somebody says something, and then it becomes a little more shrill the next time, and then more shrill the next time, and pretty soon it's a foment that becomes physical in addition to just verbal."
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Doesn't that seem precisely like the script that's being played here? With each increasingly-ridiculous utterance from the Left, it's almost as though they're testing the limits of the envelope with this Lott thing.
So if that's the script, who is the stage director?
Now, consider again: who did Daschle pick to head the Democrat's "Steering and Coordination Committee," which is responsible for the Party's spin? ...Another refresher, from the Democrats' own Democrats.com:
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[The Party is putting Sen.] Clinton in charge of the Steering and Coordination Committee, a mid-level leadership position that is appointed by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD)... 'Nobody better understands the resources that the right has mustered to clobber Democrats,' said a Democratic source familiar with the situation. 'From the money to the media manipulation, she gets it.' 'She can articulate our needs and goals better than anyone,' added a Democratic strategist.'"
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So here you have it. She who the Democrats feel best "gets" the art of media manipulation is at the helm, pushing the buttons and yanking the levers of the media. She of the FBI files. She of the Clinton War Room. (Recall Gennifer Flowers' allegations in her lawsuit, "Mrs. Clinton thus conceived of, ran, and used the War Room to smear, defame and harm perceived adversaries...", ).
And just how good a choice was she?
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From AFPC.com:
Citing speeches by Hillary Clinton, Chinese communist officials were urged to learn Western propaganda skills to "engage in a public opinion struggle with our political adversaries," wrote Yu Quanyu in the Beijing Ideological and Political Work Studies journal, cited in the Far Eastern Economic Review. Yu, a senior Chinese propagandist, is director of the press and media institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He highlighted Mrs. Clinton's speeches at the 1995 International Women's Forum in Beijing, which lasted "15 minutes each time, winning seven or eight rounds of applause." Yu described Mrs. Clinton's speeches as, "short, with little or no substance... aimed at merely winning applause and votes."
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She "gets it", all right.
And Lott is/has done everything to help. I don't want Lott to leave because the Dems forced him out - we should figure out how to rid ourselves of him and have a speaker who will play offense not defense - which is what Lott will and always will do.
On November 24, we published a minimally noticed article titled "The Democratic Party's Way" located at:
http://www.uhuh.com/reports/headsup/fron297.htm#fron297.htm and/or here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/794587/posts
Below is a snippet from the end.
Obviously, Daschle knows just exactly how true that was with Hillary, too. Therefore, he has drafted his most experienced Fascist to run their propaganda machine -- and cause other problems.
Who better than the junior Senator from New York, who still has all those FBI files tucked away for future use? So, in an almost totally unprecedented move, Daschle will try a little hardball by having Senate Democrats name Hillary to their leadership team next year to help develop a plan to counter the Republican message. As chairman of the Steering committee, she will act as a liaison with outside groups and organizations.
Which means, she will again set up an active war room, conscript a cabal of media sycophants who can lie on camera with a straight face and do her best to cause as many personal problems for Republicans as possible. That is, after all, the Democratic Party's way of doing things. But, this time many people are wise to their treachery and will be watching closely.
One thing I forgot to report there was that Hillary still had most of her old propaganda team in place -- the War Room. Many of them get their paychecks from media honchos who support the Clintons. The rest are on her staff and Daschle & Company immediately kicked in a couple million bucks to give her another Capitol Hill staff. So, she got that little project up and running right away.
So, now we see her first example: Lott.
That's the story behind that story and no one is reporting it. The rest of that story is simple: why is it a story? Are we to believe that so many in the media are that corrupt? Surely, most of the people in the national media know what's going on. Yet, they still act as if this stupid campaigning-style rhetoric is a continuing news story.
If we allow this to continue, she will go after all of the Republican leadership one or two at a time. After all, that is exactly why Daschle gave her the position and a nearly bottomless checkbook. Hillary now has as many staff, just on Capitol Hill, as anyone there. She is intentionally churning the news and no one is reporting it.
Recommendation: tell all your friends. Make big noise. Rewrite these words in your own words and send them far and wide.
I never had much use for Lott, but I have a lot less use for these contemptuous socialists force-feeding that type of corrupt "news" to the American people.
Clearly, Hillary's "War Room" must be attacked and defeated. That will require the help of everyone.
He probably won't resign as majority leader (heck, Byrd was a grand wizard and he didn't resign the leadership), and ol' Trent sure ain't gonna leave the Senate. So why Lott?
5.56mm
Because he was there -- and an easy one to start with.
No other reason.
The soggy remains of a 'landslide'
Wesley Pruden
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published December 17, 2002
Dumping Trent Lott has become the great morality crusade of certain Republicans.
Maybe we shouldn't be too hard on them. Maybe their mamas were frightened by bunny rabbits, or Bambi said boo.
The Democrats didn't even have to try very hard to get the Republicans to bite on this one, and the dump-Lott campaign, of which certain Republicans are inordinately proud, is driven not by Democratic expedience nor even Congressional Black Caucus outrage, but by Republican outrage, much of it no doubt sincere, and Republican fear and opportunism as well.
Don Nickles, for one, cannot believe his good fortune. The Oklahoma senator, who broke with his Senate colleagues Sunday to suggest that it was time to get a new leader, has been trying for years to get Mr. Lott's job.
Maybe Mr. Lott will be banished from the company of those who imagine themselves to be the Good People, but the Republicans crying to dump him, however pure their motives may be, are not likely to be seen as trying to do the right thing, but the political thing. They're dumping him not because they think he's a racist — most of them take pains to say they don't believe that. They're dumping him because they imagine it's the political thing to do. The Democrats get the last laugh of Nov 5. All the enthusiasm of "the great Republican landslide" of '02 is gone with the wind. If Mr. Lott survives, he will be a wounded and ineffective leader; if he goes, the bitter legacy of a sorry episode survives.
In addition to Mr. Lott, who said the dumb, insensitive, thoughtless and hurtful thing, the president can thank whoever has been giving him advice on how to deal with it. He sent Ari Fleischer out to rebuke, mildly, the infamous birthday eulogy to 100-year-old Strom Thurmond for two days running, but said nothing himself until The Washington Post and the New York Times demanded that the Republicans fire Mr. Lott as the leader in the Senate. Only then did the prez speak for himself. Who could have thought that George W. Bush would be seen as waiting for cues from the editorial pages of The Post and the New York Times? Why else did it take a week for the president (or Karl Rove) to conclude that Mr. Lott's sin was beyond pardon, that he was the sinner beyond redemption?
Mr. Rove, this president's Dick Morris, is obsessed with the idea that he can peel away from the Democrats enough black, Hispanic and Muslim voters to create a permanent Republican majority. George W. won only 9 percent of the black vote in 2000, down significantly from Ronald Reagan's 12 percent in 1980 and down spectacularly from Richard Nixon's 32 percent in 1960. And 30 percent of the black vote, for whatever it may say about what black voters who know him think of him, is just about what Trent Lott usually gets in his races in Mississippi. (George W. never got anything like that in Texas.)
Pandering, as tempting as it may be, won't get it. If the Republicans at the White House want to actually improve the lives of black voters, and even the lives of black Americans who don't vote, they'll have to work harder at it. Slogans are nice, but sometimes slogans ("leave no child behind") don't get it, either.
Sometimes a president has to stand to deliver, to offend Democrats, displease certain editorialists and enrage the race hustlers (even Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton). George W., to cite one specific example of opportunity lost, dropped his school-voucher program, modest program it was, when Teddy Kennedy and the teachers' unions said nothing doing.
As irrelevant as a school voucher may be to those who put their kids in the elite private (and mostly white) schools where money is rarely the object, they're not irrelevant to the parents, many of them black, whose kids are doomed to the kinds of public schools we have in, for example, the District of Columbia. Nothing would do more than vouchers to break the stranglehold of the teachers unions on public-school education. The unions, with eager Democratic help, have together created a quasi-segregated system of lousy public schools in most of the places where state-mandated segregation was the rule in Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat heyday.
The Republicans have conspired with the Democrats to add billions of dollars to federal education spending, but flinch from trying to make sure that it will be used to actually teach kids black and white to add and subtract, to understand a little science, to learn the history of their country, to speak or write a coherent sentence, or even to spell their names. Perhaps it's even "racist" to think any of these things are important, but many parents, black as well as white, do. It was the black parents who overcame the obstacles that created the successful school-choice movement in Milwaukee and Cleveland. The heroine of the movement was a black woman, Polly Williams, and a Democrat to boot.
As difficult and no doubt unpleasant as organizing the dump-Trent campaign may be for the White House, it's a lot easier than standing up to Teddy Kennedy and his allies on issues actually crucial to the future of black children, particularly when you may get thanks but can't expect to get many votes for it. But along with dumping Trent Lott you do get to invoke Abraham Lincoln, who never renounced his long-held white-supremacy sentiments. (Strom Thurmond did.)
Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times. Copyright 2002 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
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