|
Lott More
Everyone by now has presumably heard or read Trent Lott’s incredible interview on Black Entertainment Television. Exactly like a university or corporation that responds to a hyped-up charge of racism by promising vast new racial preferences and diversity-sensivity programs, Lott is trying to make up for his offense against black people by promising to spend the rest of his political life giving them everything they want. If he continues as GOP Senate leader the Republicans will have the worst of both worlds—a leader whom the Left will keep attacking as a racist even as he keeps calling himself one. Some on the right strongly defend Lott. Here’s Paul Weyrich: “We should defend Trent Lott to the end of the earth when he is being unfairly attacked as he is now… . If Lott goes down, this will only encourage more expeditions by the left to bag conservatives for making statements deemed to be politically incorrect, no matter if they are just off-the-cuff, ill-considered remarks.” I disagree with Weyrich. For the reasons stated, I think Lott is a terrible liability to the Republican party. However, there is another concern. Joel Mobray writes at TownHall.com:
“Friends” of the Mississippi Senator made clear over the weekend that if he was forced to step aside from leadership, he would resign from the Senate altogether. If he did so, the Chafee factor would kick in. The liberal Republican from Rhode Island—who has resisted criticizing Lott for fear that that might pave the way for a more conservative replacement—would almost surely jump at the chance to bask in the media glow resulting from pulling a Jeffords redux.Quite a fix. Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 18, 2002 02:29 AM | Send Comments
It really is quite a serious problem, but I enjoyed the following satire: http://weblog.theviewfromthecore.com/2002_12.html#001079 Jesus, Matt, that’s hilarious! I still haven’t stopped laughing! Posted by: Jim Newland on December 18, 2002 3:50 AMMatt, that IS absolutely hilarious! In fact, reading that BRILLIANT piece, one sees right away that some kind of satire of the other side, pulled off by our side (though not so direct and biting as this satire, obviously, but satire of the other side nevertheless) might have been the better way to handle this, instead of these mea culpas. It’s extremely hard to defend yourself against effective satire. Thanks for posting that! Posted by: Unadorned on December 18, 2002 7:32 AMTrent Lott, while perhaps not the most “conservative” Senate Republican, endorsed some positions that people in this forum could agree with. I am thinking specifically of his call to put troops on the Mexican border. Let’s face it, no politician is going to be perfect, but we have to ask ourselves what the alternatives are. Lott got no support from “conservatives”. In fact, it was “conservatives” such the NRO boys, David Frum, Charles Krauthammer and Andrew Sullivan who led the charge against Lott and who kept the story alive. Left hanging in the wind, Lott had to turn for support where he could find it. The man is a career politician, it is crazy to think he won’t fight for his position. I hope Lott is forced out and as a consequence he resigns. I hope the Chaffee scenario plays out. I hope southern Whites stay home next election, or vote for a third party. Hopefully the Republican establishment will learn a lesson. Continually attacking the one group of people who consistently and overwhelmingly votes Republican, Southern whites, is not particularly bright. I say this as a Californian from a long line of Yankee rebel haters. Posted by: Mitchell Young on December 18, 2002 8:16 AM |