I know what Trent Lott did one week ago. He intentionally praised a party that's only reason for existence was to retain segregation and keep blacks as second-class citizens.
Trent Lott is a gentleman right now, and a good public servant. Somehow I missed how Lott was a good public servant. Was it when he scuttled impeachment, or caved to every Clinton initiative, or entered a power-sharing agreement with Daschle, or allowed Jeffords to give the Senate to the Dems, or created this useless firestorm which has plunged the Republican Party into damage-control mode and emboldened a moribund Democratic party and Congressional Black Caucus. Why are we blowing years of political capital to save this toupeed mediocrity's hide?
EXACTLY!!!!!! If this were George Bush or Dick Armey or Tom DeLay, it would be worth the fight. But I'll be damned if I am going to watch my party go over the cliff for this POS.
Did ANY of you see E.J. Dionne's op-ed in the Washington Post today? The headline itself says it all:
Party of Lincoln or Lott?
The Republican Party has reached a fork in the road. We have accommodated the Confederate wing for too damn long and it has cost us too much! In this election we made great progress in many states with minority voters, and certainly we are making progress with Jewish voters as the Democrats continue to suck up to the Palestinians and Islamists. But this MORON is going to blow all of right down the toilet.
So Lott says he was speaking "off-the-cuff" at the Thurmond Party. Don't you wonder, then, why he said what he said, and NOT something honoring Thurmond's repudiation of segregation and all the hard work he did to mend fences with and support the black community in South Carolina and arouns the country? By focusing his remarks on the 1948 Dixiecrat campaign, and "all the trouble we've had since," clearly Lott was showing what mattered MOST to him about Thurmond's career!
I've been convinced for years that Lott was a race-bomb waiting to go off on the GOP. If we can get him to resign as Leadr now, we might be able to salvage the situation, especially in light of the President's strong comments. But think about what is going to happen if Lott refuses to step down:
--Every time Lott goes to the White House, President Bush is going to be guilty by association. If Bush so much as shakes Lott's hand in public, there is the picture on the flyer that will be passed out in every inner-city neighborhood on Election Day 2004. The Democrats will make Trent Lott into George Bush's running mate, as surely as Lee Atwater said that the elder Bush would turn Willie Horton into Dukakis' running mate, and did. THIS WILL BE A DISASTER FOR BUSH IN 2004!!!!
--Every time the Senate Republicans attempt any domestic initiatives, the Democrats will have an opening to question whether it is good for blacks.
--Senate Democrats will waste NO time attempting to bring up minimum wage legislation, a new hate crime bill, and various other "civil rights" bills that Lott will be forced to try to kill. The hole will be dug deeper and deeper.
Does ANYONE here really want to live through two years of this crap, and then at the end have a Democrat in the White House and a Democrat-controlled Congress??? Because that is exactly what is going to happen unless we dump Lott! And we must do it NOW!