Posted on 12/15/2002 4:04:11 PM PST by Lessismore
After Trent Lott’s repulsive comments at Strom Thurmond’s 100th-birthday party, Democrats and independents have a right to ask the following questions: Is this the way Republicans talk when they are alone? Is this what they secretly believe?
All I can offer is personal testimony. As a conservative political journalist for nearly two decades, I’ve been in many rooms with Republicans late at night, with the liquor flowing. I have never heard the N word uttered in those circumstances. I have never heard an overtly racist comment.
Have I heard comments that could be viewed as offensive and covertly racist? Of course. As I have when I’m around white liberals.
In fact, one of the nice things about being around conservatives is that on the whole we are remarkably direct about race. Conservatives give no one, regardless of skin color, automatic merits or de-merits. You earn something, you deserve it. Otherwise no.
White liberals sometimes give themselves virtue merit badges for every African-American friend they have. The besetting liberal sin on race is to be patronizing. The besetting conservative sin is to be oblivious. We sometimes act as if the reality of race will simply go away if we all agree to ignore it.
Nonetheless, the conservative response to Lott’s comments was instinctive and scathing. The Wall Street Journal editorial page understood the importance of the story quicker than the rest of the national media. Among Republican politicos, the response was just as telling. They were bewildered.
Most Republicans see themselves walking in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, Theodore Roosevelt or Thomas Jefferson. Whom does Lott follow? “Sometimes I feel closer to Jefferson Davis than any other man in America,” he once said. He seems to believe that the era of intrusive liberal government and cultural decay began because the wrong side won the Civil War or “the war of aggression,” as Lott calls it. He seems to regard Abraham Lincoln as the precursor to George McGovern.
These are not normal Republican ideas. These are ideas of a person so out of touch with 21st- century America that he doesn’t deserve to be holding a leadership job for a major political party.
The problem for Lott is that he is living in 1862 or, at the latest, 1948. The problem for the Democrats is that many of them are still living around 1963. They seized upon Lott’s comments as a chance to replay the whole Bull Connor/”Mississippi Burning” story line. And if you can count on Republicans to be clumsy on racial matters, you can count on Democrats to go over the top. By Friday, some Democrats and liberal commentators were calling the entire Republican Party racist, and implying that the entire South is racist. (Then they wonder why they have trouble winning national elections and holding onto Senate and gubernatorial seats in states like Georgia.)
The fact is, this is 2002. There are still racial matters to discuss and argue about. But they have little to do with whatever Strom Thurmond was screeching about in 1948. Today’s dilemmas are more complex. Trent Lott, whose serial apologies last week were little more than a series of stale and witless cliches, doesn’t seem to have thought seriously about any of this.
Brooks, a NEWSWEEK contributing editor, is the author of “Bobos in Paradise.”
Then, Representative Lewis (on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus) called former Presidential Candidate Algore (who likewise had not noticed the offensiveness Lott uttered).
Lewis unloaded on him - "Nancy Pelosi must be saved - the Republicans are getting read to trash her" - he intoned pleadingly. "Besides", he added, "if we save that sorry bit-h's a$$, she's going to have to give us the juice".
Algore, recognizing that he still had some unemployed staffers around, and the rest would be looking for jobs after he told Leslie Stahl on Sunday that he was not going to run for President again, knew a deal could be made - hire his people and he'd contact a compliant and "bought" AP reporter about how racist and offensive Lott had been.
As he hung up the phone, Algore reached for his roladex - first to the AP guy, then to Jesse Jackson, now to Clymer.
"Well, that's the way it's done" he thought as he punched in the buttons.
The pubbies are maturing. In the post-9/11 world, we don't have time for idiots like Trent Lott. It's a dangerous world out there and, thankfully, the adults are in charge. The GOP is the "daddy" party, and sometimes "daddy" has to lose some of the friends he made down the pool hall if he wants to move forward. Who knows, perhaps the Dems will clean house, too, and one day become serious candidates for government. Somehow, though, I doubt it.
And let's not forget that it was Hollins who, while governor, put the Confederate flag up in SC.
Lest we forget, the late-Governor Carnahan of Missouri appeared in mistral "drag" during the early 1960's.
But even if Lott is not a racist, he is a spoiled sport and an arrogant elitest a**hole who doesn't deserve a leadership position in this party at the turn of the 21st century. Any true gentleman of the ilk he claims to be, would have stepped aside two years ago when he lost the Senate to Daschle. In the meantime, Lott has been more worried about his hairstyle, his daughter's wedding appearing in Southern Living, and preserving his own "leadership" career than in the fate of the President or his party. It is for that reason, lack of support of the President, that he should step aside.
As a conservative political journalist for nearly two decades, I’ve been in many rooms with Republicans late at night, with the liquor flowing.
I have never heard the N word uttered in those circumstances. I have never heard an overtly racist comment.
Have I heard comments that could be viewed as offensive and covertly racist? Of course.
As I have when I’m around white liberals.
Can that be said about blacks when referring to each other while in public or private?
They are not nearly as respectful toward each other as they want all others to be.
Evidently they are only offended when their perceived enemy "whitey" himself calls them the same things they readily call each other without compunction.
Their hypocrisy is nauseating.
It just doesn't apply to the loony left!
Since the author of the piece, David Brooks, is a Senior Editor at The Weekly Standard, it is probably not a "*DEMOCRAT*" lecture.
What have these gatekeepers said about Bush and conservatives? A sampling:
George W. Bush, Klansman:: "He has selected nominees from the Taliban wing of American politics, appeased the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing, and chosen Cabinet officials whose devotion to the confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritical affection." - Julian Bond, speaking to the national NAACP convention, July 2001.
King Herod was a Republican: "But the bigger issue, it seems to me, is not merely the ethnic diversity of his Cabinet. I keep coming back to budget priorities and public policy. We just are coming out of the Christmas season, Juan, where Herod made the poorest folks even pay taxes. That's why Mary and Joseph had to pay tax and do the census count. But when Herod got the money, he wanted to invest in the shepherds having more land and more sheep, not invest in at-risk babies. Jesus was an at-risk baby, you know, in the manger, in the stable." - Jesse Jackson, Talk of the Nation, December 27, 2000.
George W. Bush, Lynch-Mob Leader: ""My father was killed. He was beaten, chained, and dragged three miles to his death, all because he was black. So when Gov. George W. Bush refused to support hate-crimes legislation, it was like my father was killed all over again." - Renee Mullins, daughter of racial murder victim James Byrd, in an NAACP-sponsored 2000 political ad.
George W. Bush, Gauleiter: "Nazi tactics." - Jackson, on how the GOP won the Florida recount, December 2000.
Conservatives as race-haters: "In South Africa, we call it apartheid. In Nazi Germany, we'd call it fascism. Here in the United States, we call it conservatism," said Jesse Jackson years ago." - Jackson, 1995.
Malik Shabazz, New Black Panther Party National Chairman
How do you think sharks now have a human appetite? It came from the white man throwing us overboard and sharks eating us. Now sharks are coming back and biting them!...They want to tell to us about bin Laden. Bin Laden. Blame it on bin Laden. Mr. Bush, his wife won't sleep with him at night. Blame it on bin Laden. Mr. Bush, drinking a keg of beer and eating some pretzels, passes out. Blame it on bin Laden. They want to talk to us about bin Laden. They want to blame poor ol' little Saddam Hussein, who poses no threat to America; doesn't even have so much as a can of raid. They want to talk about those terrorists. We come to talk about a terrorist named Christopher Columbus. I want to talk about a terrorist named George Washington. I want to talk about a terrorist named Thomas Jefferson. I want to talk about a terrorist called the Inglewood Police Department. I want to talk about a terrorist named Prince George's County Police Department. A terrorist called Rudy Giuliani. A terrorist called the New York Police Department. The real terrorists have always been right here in the United Snakes of America!...we lost our name, our language, our religion, our culture, our God. They say if they don't give us reparations, "Well what if we don't give it to you?" We say the book of Exodus says that "he who stealeth a man and selleth that man if he be caught with that man in his hand he will surely be put to death." If you don't give us reparations - America is burning right now, it's on fire. The stock market is crashing right now, it's on fire. There's confusion in the White House; America is going down! If you don't give us reparations, God's wrath will come on America!
I apologize for skimming the article and jumping to the wrong conclusions.
Personally, I found the idiocy behind them, not the words themselves, repulsive.
We can either defend Trent Lott just to show how much we hate Jesse and Al and the other Al and Hillary and Bobby Bird, or we can ask: "What do we really believe and can Trent Lott really represent it effectively on the national scene?"
Conservatives generally believe that people ought to be free to achieve as individuals, and that their character and accomplishments as individuals are more important than their group identity. What Trent Lott said was that the country would be better off if a hardline segregationist had been elected president in 1948. What he said was clear in itself; it was not, as some posters have claimed, empty fluff in praise of an old fellow. The words had content.
Then it apparently took him days (and two failed apologies) to figure out what people were upset about, until the President laid it out word-for-word in his speech. "OHH, they want me to say that segregation was wrong! Well, who'd a guessed that?" And now in the aftermath it has become very public knowledge that he has a long history of saying things like that.
I don't give a happy rat's derriere whether Lott is a racist or a peabrain or a peabrained racist. I don't care what he really meant to say. I don't care how how hypocritical the Democrats are or how nasty-mouthed their leaders are. The only question I am interested in is whether this man can now credibly lead the Senate to act on the political principles I believe in as a conservative.
The answer is that he obviously can't. What he said was not what mainstream conservatives and mainstream Republicans believe. He did not speak for us, and he has damaged our cause. He is going to be a millstone around the neck of every conservative judicial appointment, a bad odor clinging to every discussion of racial preferences. His record suggests that he will sell us out to the Democrats at every turn in order to maintain his power.
Trent Lott did this to himself (and to us) all by himself; you can't blame the Dems for taking shots at him when he's tied himself to the target. Lott is a politician. Conservatives don't owe him anything. He is not a hero of conservative principle who is getting pounded for one mistake. He is a political schmoozer who's best known for pork-barrelling, spinelessness, and periodic expressions of nostalgia for white supremacy. He's a big boy, he's been in politics a long We don't need him.
Those who are saying, "Hey, we gotta hang tough, can't let the race husters win this one" have fallen right into the trap being set for us.
You think Jackson and Sharpton and the Democratic leadership want the Republicans to repudiate the leadership of a brainless blow-dried Mississippi Republican who says he feels closer to Jefferson Davis than to anyone else in American history? Trent Lott is Donna Brazille's sweet baboo; he is Jackson's new lease on life; he will keep Sharpton in expensive suits for another decade. If he stays as majority leader, a Nexus search in 2004 will show five thousand mentions of "racial preferences," "segregation," and "Trent Lott" appearing in the same paragraph.
I'm sorry, it is just not tolerable to me that the big issue facing the Republican Party, just a little over a month after a great and surprising electoral victory, is whether the Senate Majority Leader can muster a credible denunciation of segregation. We have serious stuff to do in this country right now. We can't afford this foolishness.
Lott ejiciendum est.
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