What was likely to be a conservative romp for the next two years is now in serious doubt. Well done, Republicans!
Posted on 12/16/2002 9:28:43 AM PST by dogbyte12
I am convinced that it is time for the party of Lincoln to reject the leadership of Lott. None of my business as a state elected official? I believe it is every Republican's business.
I agree with President Bush that Senator Lott has seriously erred, and with Senate Whip Don Nickles that a new leader is needed. It's nothing personal. In some tough legislative leadership contests of my own, I've realized that these decisions are not about approval or disapproval of someone, they are about political judgments.
The question facing the senator's colleagues, and our party as a whole, is not whether Lott is a bad man — he isn't. The question is whether there are others now better suited to be Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate — and I believe there are. My reasons for this political judgment were given in a December 14 letter to Colorado's two senators in Washington, Wayne Allard and Ben Nighthorse Campbell.
I congratulated them on regaining a Republican majority. But I said that to keep faith with the trust placed in our party by the voters, they should use their influence in replacing Trent Lott as Majority Leader with a senator who demonstrates a better understanding of the lessons of American history and the values of the Republican party.
I know that Senator Lott is a decent man with good intentions. I know he has repeatedly apologized for having said that a vote for Strom Thurmond's segregationist presidential candidacy in 1948 is something to be "proud of," and that a Thurmond victory that year would have prevented many "problems" our country has since experienced. But what has been said, and in Lott's case not for the first time, on a subject this serious, cannot be unsaid. The damage is done, and Senator Lott should be replaced as leader.
Here's what I mean in referring to the lessons of our history and the values of our party. Americans had four choices for president in 1948, an election I dimly remember from boyhood. There were the Democrat Harry Truman, carrying forward the liberal policies of FDR's New Deal; the Progressive Henry Wallace, advocating appeasement of Soviet Communism; the Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, defending Southern racism; and the Republican Tom Dewey, representing our Lincoln heritage of constitutional government, individual freedom, emancipation, and "all created equal."
By my lights, the obvious right vote that year was a Republican vote, a vote for Dewey. There was nothing to be "proud of" in voting for the fatally flawed ideas of Thurmond or Wallace or Truman. If Trent Lott is so confused as to think otherwise, GOP senators shouldn't want him as their leader for the next two years — or as their spokesman on what Republicans stand for.
Lott's continuing to serve in the Senate is quite right. His state elected him, and he should stay. But his continuing as Majority Leader is not appropriate after his outrageous statement at the Thurmond birthday party and his disturbing inability to "get it" in the ensuing days.
This matter is not easy, but it is simple — as simple as history itself. Because if we believe that Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s and Theodore Roosevelt in the 1900s and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s were good presidents, we simply cannot believe that Strom Thurmond in the 1940s would have been a good president. As Republicans we cannot believe both.
Senator Lott can still do the right thing and ask colleagues to replace him. If he won't, the caucus should vote again to choose a different Majority Leader, one that all Republicans and all Americans can be proud of. The above is substantially what I said in my letter to Senators Wayne Allard and Ben Campbell.
What they do about it is up to them, and they'll have my respect regardless. They have many considerations to weigh, knowledge I'm not privy to, and they don't need my uninvited opinion. A Democratic appointee replacing Lott, if he were to be so disgraced that he is forced out of the Senate and not merely out of leadership, is the last thing I want. That would tie the Senate and impede many important goals for President Bush. Everyone involved is walking a tightrope.
But I can't forget my experience 30 years ago during Watergate. As a young Nixon staffer torn between partisan defensiveness and principle, I learned the importance of not letting ourselves be paralyzed from holding our own leaders to a high standard, merely because we are so offended by the motives and methods of those on the other side who are howling for blood. The hypocrisy of Lott's enemies in no way excuses the wrongness of his statements. Republicans can find a better Majority Leader. We should do so.
— John Andrews is a Republican state senator from the Denver suburbs. On January 8 he will become president of the Colorado senate.
What was likely to be a conservative romp for the next two years is now in serious doubt. Well done, Republicans!
There is never going to be a conservative romp with Trent Lott in control of the Senate. He will compromise away every opportunity. Even more so since the Strom Thurmond birthday misstatement.
— John Andrews is a Republican state senator from the Denver suburbs. On January 8 he will become president of the Colorado senate.
This is from National Review, this guy was a former Nixon aide who is very much a republican. Look at the whole article next time.
You know, what I find so amazing that both Srom and Lott were
DEMOCRATS when they were spouting their segragationist ideals.
They were not REPUBLICANS.
The Republican Party was founded as the party that was against slavery.
When Lott and them espoused whatever segragationist sentiments they had, they spoke as democrats. I know I must be repeating myself but it truly does bear repeating.
Heck, it bears repeeating again!
I suppose these guys are Democrats as well?
Michael Medved: A Lott of Uncomfortable Lessons from Senator's Disgrace
Cal Thomas: Old Times There Are Not Forgotten
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