Senate Majority Leader: I wish the segregationist had won!

[Sava]

this whole Lott thing reminds me of South Park the Movie...

the part when the military unveils the strategy, "operation: hide behind the darkies"...



Chef tells the general, "Have you ever heard of the Emancipation Proclamation?"
the general replies, "I don't listen to hip-hop"

That's sooooo Trent Lott...

[chequita guevara]

The real Trent Lott

The real Trent Lott
A leading Mississippi segregationist says his old friend shares his racist views and his recantation is bogus.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Jake Tapper



Dec. 13, 2002 | Richard Barrett doesn't understand what's gotten into his friend and longtime political ally, incoming Majority Leader Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. As the world knows by now, at the birthday party last week for retiring centenarian Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., Lott said, "I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president" -- as a segregationist Dixiecrat, in 1948 -- "we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Lott has since apologized -- and therein lies Barrett's confusion. Barrett, you see, is first officer for the Mississippi-based segregationist Nationalist Movement, and he has long considered Lott an ally in his fight.

"I think he's pulling a Galileo," Barrett says, referring to the Italian astronomer who proved the Earth revolves around the Sun and, tried by the Inquisition in Rome, was ordered to retract his conclusion. "He recanted, but it didn't change the heavenly orbits," Barrett says, "and neither does Trent Lott's recantation make integration moral."

Lott spokesman Ron Bonjean says that Barrett is just wrong. "Sen. Lott stands by his words," Bonjean says. "He repudiates segregation because it is immoral."

Barrett is more than a little familiar with Lott; hanging in his house is a photograph of the two of them taken maybe 25 years ago at a reception in Pascagoula for Lott's one-time mentor, segregationist former Rep. William L. Colmer, D-Miss. When Barrett talks about Lott, the memories run deep. "Trent Lott began as a cheerleader at Ole Miss," he says. "He ran onto the field carrying the Confederate flag -- that's how he became popular. Would he have become popular running onto the field carrying a picture of Martin Luther King? I don't think so."

That's why Lott's apology and capitulation angers Barrett so much. "When did Trent Lott become an integrationist?" he asks. "It certainly wasn't at Ole Miss carrying the Confederate flag. Not when William Colmer put him in his office." After Colmer retired in 1972, he supported Lott, his chief aide, to succeed him, even though Lott ran as a Republican.

And Barrett remembers that November 1994 night, right after Lott was reelected to his second Senate term when, "at his victory celebration, at the Coliseum Ramada Inn, Trent entered the hall and the first person he went up to shake hands with and greet was me. He called me by my name and was very affable."

But has Lott ever specifically talked to Barrett about supporting segregation? Barrett finds the question naive. "Does Jesse Jackson talk to Al Sharpton about integration?" he asks. "Do they have to? Is there some split in the black caucus on that issue? There is certainly no split in Mississippi on segregation. Mississippi is still the solid South."

Barrett says he spent a lot of time on the phone Wednesday night with close advisors to Lott, he says. "We're all like one big happy family in Mississippi. We're the heart of Dixie. I've certainly never heard him say anything in favor of integration, let me put it to you that way."

But is it possible that Barrett was mistakenly assuming that Lott supported segregation? "As Al Smith used to say, let's look at the record," Barrett says. "Trent Lott has opposed the Martin Luther King holiday. He has backed white segregated schools." Barrett is fully aware of all the dribs and drabs of controversy that are remaking their way into newspapers in light of Lott's comments about Thurmond -- his November 1981 amicus brief on behalf of Bob Jones University, which declared that "discriminatory practices" are not "illegal in themselves," defending the school's rules against "interracial dating as part of its sincere religious belief," asserting that "(i)t remains unclear whether [the law] prohibits racial discrimination by religious schools."

Barrett knows all about Lott's 1992 declaration that the racist Council of Conservative Citizens "stand for the right principles and the right philosophy," his 1989 opposition to a congressional resolution designating June 21 as "Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner Day" after the three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, killed in Philadelphia, Miss., on June 21, 1964.

"Many of these things were from years gone past, some as long as 40 years ago when our country was in a different era," Bonjean says. "We are in the year 2002 and Sen. Lott repudiates segregation." Bonjean adds that Lott has a "good civil rights record," presenting a three-page document showing Lott's work on such matters as making it a federal offense to commit arson in black churches, his work bringing 6,000 jobs to the predominantly poor and black Mississippi Delta, and providing funding for state schools such as the historically black Jackson State University, where a space research center is named after him.

In 1981, after Rep. John Hinson, D-Miss., resigned in disgrace, arrested for attempted sodomy in a House office building's restroom, Barrett says he "met with Trent Lott and asked him if he would have any objection to my running to succeed Hinson. He said, 'Of course not, jump in the race.'"

There is no question as to who Barrett was and what he stood for, he insists. "State Sen. Hob Bryan gave a speech on the Senate floor denouncing me, calling me the last segregationist." He's proud of such descriptions. In Mississippi, Barrett contends, he is anything but a fringe player. "I am chairman of the Spirit of America Day," he says. "It's an organization that holds an annual festival honoring Mississippi high school athletes." The Anti-Defamation League describes it as "an annual dinner honoring white male athletes," which enjoys "the support of United States congressmen, governors and local politicians as late as 1984 (long after Barrett's racist views were publicly known)."

These are just white Christian athletes? I ask Barrett.

"They're the leading young people of their generation," Barrett says. "It is the future leaders of Mississippi."

But they're just white, right?

"I won't be race-baited," Barrett says. "They're red, white and blue. They're all-American young people. I will say that the event has been criticized by the Jackson Advocate -- a Negro newspaper -- as a Klan rally." Anyway, Barrett says that "every year Trent Lott sends a letter of greeting and congratulations to young people."

Barrett has harsh words for President Bush's Thursday rebuke of Lott. "Sen. Lott was right" in his original comments, Barrett says. "Integration is immoral and should also be illegal." Barrett thinks that whatever he's saying now, Lott still believes that in his "heart of hearts." What about Bush? "His heart of hearts has been addled by his drug-abused brain," Barrett says.

Mississippi is still the Deep South, Barrett says, and Lott should have stood up for it, should have stood up for the segregationist spirit that still lives in Dixie. But that's OK, the state will last a lot longer than Lott. After all, "you don't judge France by those who collaborated with the Germans," he says. "You look to the Resistance, not to the appeasers.

"What's that poem?" he asks himself. "'Those who shout appease, appease, are hung by those they sought to please.' That's the tragedy of Trent Lott."


- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Jake Tapper is national correspondent for Salon.

[chequita guevara]

The ugly truth about Republican racial politics

The GOP needs to do a lot more than rebuke Trent Lott to make up for its legacy of pandering to white bigots and suppressing the black vote.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joan Walsh



Dec. 14, 2002 | I almost feel sorry for Trent Lott. Almost.

How could the Senate Majority Leader have known that his words of praise for Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential campaign -- "We voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years" -- could possibly cost him his job? After all, Lott's been saying the same sorts of things for decades now, and on the rare occasion that they even make news, he's always escaped the same way: Insisting he wasn't endorsing racism even as he praised racist institutions, from Thurmond's Dixiecrat Party to Bob Jones University to myriad pro-Confederacy groups the Mississippi right-winger has allied himself with his entire career.

Four years ago, for instance, when Lott's long association with the Council of Conservative Citizens made headlines during President Clinton's impeachment trial, he insisted he had "no firsthand knowledge" of the group's well-known racist views. He got away with it even though his favorite uncle, who sat on the group's executive board, told the New York Times: "Trent is an honorary member. He's spoken at meetings." And even though the group's crackpot racism -- its opposition to interracial marriage, its admiration for French fascist Jean-Marie LePen, its attacks on Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln -- was available for the world to see on its Web site, which also featured a political column by none other than Trent Lott.

That time around, though, there was no rebuke from other Republican leaders, no New York Times editorial demanding he step down. The Times' editorialists were too consumed with bashing Clinton, presumably, and in fact most news organizations played the flap in the context of the impeachment battle. (It was Clinton defender Alan Dershowitz who was responsible for publicizing Lott's association with the Council, along with that of another leading Clinton critic, Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia.) For a while the story played out as a kind of "he said, she said" gotcha game, as though the two men's well-documented racist affiliations were mud being flung at them by desperate Clinton defenders. Unbelievably, Barr and Lott walked away unscathed.

That won't happen this time. Lott may survive as majority leader -- he issued his fourth apology Friday, calling segregation "wrong and immoral," and seems determined to tough it out -- but he'll be forever shadowed by this episode. (And he may be forced to walk the plank if the issue doesn't die.) But while the nation is sitting through its history lesson, however belatedly, let's make clear what this flap is really about. The Republican Party has prospered for almost 40 years by doing exactly what Lott did at Thurmond's 100th birthday party last week: Quietly appeasing its retrograde Southern base with coded symbols of solidarity, while disavowing overt racism for a national audience. Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy" -- rebuild the party by luring whites repelled by the Democrats' pro-civil rights stance -- didn't die with his presidency. And Lott's not the only one using it today.

Although President Bush rebuked the majority leader for his latest remarks and demanded a more convincing apology, Bush has played the game too. He never apologized for his visit to Bob Jones University during the 2000 campaign, despite its long history as a bastion for segregationists, anti-Semites and Catholic-haters, and its ban on interracial dating. And unlike Sen. John McCain, he never apologized for his refusal to criticize pro-Confederate groups that were protesting South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges' decision to move the Confederate flag from the Statehouse dome. Nor did anyone at the White House complain when Republican candidates in South Carolina and Georgia used the flag issue last month to beat Hodges and Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes. In fact, Bush ally Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition leader turned Georgia GOP chair, was the force behind the state party's huge success last month, which was widely attributed to an unexpectedly high turnout by white, rural voters, and a dampened turnout among blacks.

And Bush has never disavowed the other key part of the GOP's current Southern strategy: the party's systematic support for efforts to dampen and discourage black voter turnout, mostly but not exclusively in the South. Gone are the days of the poll tax and the literacy test; now the GOP uses "ballot security measures" and voter-fraud crackdowns to keep black turnout low. It was Lott, by the way, who called for the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the NAACP's tax status last year, after its voter education and turnout drives were credited with a massive pro-Democratic black turnout in the 2000 election. And in last month's midterm election, Democrats in dozens of states charged Republicans with using new and old strategies to discourage blacks from going to the polls. Almost 40 years after the Voting Rights Act, the GOP still relies far more than anyone will admit on strategies that pander to white racists and keep blacks away from the polls. "The difference is now they try to do it under the radar," says University of South Carolina history professor Dan Carter, an expert in voting rights history.

What Lott did last week is part of a time-honored GOP ritual: kiss the rings of hateful pro-Confederacy, Southern "traditionalists," and then deny supporting their racist views when challenged. Look at the parade of leaders who've sat down for an interview with Southern Partisan magazine, another bastion of opposition to miscegenation, school integration and the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. (Its web site is either not working or no longer in existence, so you can't see for yourself.) It's been a rite of Republican passage to talk to Southern Partisan -- Lott, Barr, Attorney General John Ashcroft, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm -- all have graced its pages. (Even McCain employed an advisor, Richard Quinn, affiliated with the magazine.)

Southern Partisan is where Lott was quoted explaining his feeling that "the spirit of [Confederate president] Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican platform" and why he opposed a federal holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. The Ashcroft interview was just as bad. "Your magazine also helps set the record straight," he told the editors. "You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Gen. Robert E.] Lee, [Gen. Stonewall] Jackson and [Confederate president Jefferson] Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."

But when asked about those remarks during his confirmation hearing, unbelievably Ashcroft denied knowing about the magazine's racist views, and compared it to left-wing Mother Jones -- just another media outlet to which he'd given an interview, despite opposing its underlying philosophy. And unbelievably -- of course Ashcroft was never caught praising Mother Jones for setting the record straight -- he got away with it.

Now Ashcroft is presiding over the other prong of the GOP's Southern strategy, too. His Justice Department just announced a new "Voting Integrity Initiative" to deal with voter fraud, which minority group leaders say will disproportionately hit nonwhites. Although weeding out voter fraud sounds like a bipartisan, good-government priority, The American Prospect shows how historically it's been used to discourage and intimidate poor and minority voters. Efforts to purge voter registration rolls, for instance, tend to hurt those groups, who move around more; strict proof-of-identity requirements do the same thing. A Justice Department study found African-Americans five times less likely to have photo ID than whites.

There's probably no better example of the way such efforts can hurt blacks than Florida's voter-roll scrub in 2000, in which faulty information led the state to purge 94,000 eligible voters, most of them black, who were wrongly thought to be felons. But Bush didn't ask his brother Jeb to apologize for that voting-rights debacle -- not even after it came out that the governor dragged his heels on reinstating those legal voters' rights until after his reelection last month.

GOP forces pursued similar strategies aggressively in the midterm election. Under Ralph Reed, Georgia Republicans sponsored a "fair elections task force" to monitor the polls in November. In Arkansas, Republican poll watchers were accused of intimidating voters in predominantly black precincts by photographing them and demanding identification. In Michigan Republicans stationed "spotters" at black precincts, which Democrats charged meant to intimidate black voters and suppress turnout. In Baltimore, anonymous flyers circulated in black precincts urging voters to turn out Nov. 6 -- a day late -- but to first "make sure you pay your parking tickets, motor vehicle tickets, overdue rent and most important any warrants." Just last weekend, the Louisiana Republican Party paid for political signs in black neighborhoods that read: "Mary, if you don't respect us, don't expect us," an attempt to play on complaints by some African-Americans that Sen. Mary Landrieu hadn't paid enough attention to their issues. It backfired -- blacks turned out, and Landrieu beat her GOP challenger.

But Democrats are part of the reason Republicans get away with this strategy, because too many are ambivalent about the black voters who are crucial to their base. The same weekend African-Americans were saving the party's bacon in Louisiana, keeping Landrieu in the Senate, party leaders were silent on Lott. Or worse than silent: Tom Daschle actually defended him, and it was left to the Congressional Black Caucus to raise a ruckus about Lott's remarks, until other Democrats found their spines. When it comes to race, many Democrats mirror the Republican strategy in reverse: They pander to black voters privately, but try to avoid association with them publicly. Now that Lott has apologized four times, I think it's time for Daschle to come forward and say he's sorry for jumping to his colleague's defense instead of defending his party's most loyal supporters.

Why did the Lott story have legs this time around when it didn't in 1998? Partly it's because the nation was consumed by the impeachment trial four years ago, and could only handle one national political free-for-all at a time. Impeachment was a referendum on sex and politics and whether a public figure is entitled to a private life; we couldn't handle a cataclysm about race and politics at the same time. But I think Lott's dark evasions also resonate more this time because of the nation's sneaky suspicion that there's a gulf between the Bush administration's words and deeds when it comes to race.

At the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia, Karl Rove stage-managed a new, inclusive, multi-hued Republican Party. He did it for the son of the man who employed the great race-baiter Lee Atwater, the former Strom Thurmond campaign manager who gave us Willie Horton, as if to say: This is not his father's GOP. Of course, Rove and Atwater were great friends -- Atwater ran Rove's candidacy for president of the College Republicans -- so there's never been any reason to trust that Rove wouldn't wink at using race the way Atwater did if it worked in his candidate's favor.

Now Rove is said to be behind efforts to topple Lott, believing he'll be a liability to Bush in 2004. As cynical as that is, it's a good sign for American democracy. It means Rove thinks Republicans have more to lose by pandering to white bigots than they gain, that more voters -- women, suburbanites, independents -- will be turned off by Lott's embarrassing racial rhetoric than turned on by it. In a year of bad political news, that's reason for optimism. The GOP will have to do more than dump Lott to eradicate the divisive racial politics he represents, of course, but that they're even talking about it is good news for the nation.


- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Joan Walsh is the editor of Salon News.

[Guynemer]

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, ("won't get fooled again") shame on you. This establishes a pattern of behavior and belief with Trent Lott, and all the apologies in the world aren't going to make that pattern go away.

If the Republicans do not dump him, it will cripple their efforts to reach out to blacks and other minorities...

Assuming, of course, the Dems don't let him off the hook; that would be smart thing to do, which means we probably won't hear a peep from a prominent Dem for the rest of Trent Lott's natural life.

I just had a horrible thought... imagine Lott sitting in the Senate until HE is 100 years old...

[Boris Godunov]

He'll use his bitter hatred of all things different to keep him alive...

[Lord Merciless]

I think Trent Lott is hosed. Dems hate him for quite obvious reasons. But many GOPers also hate him, for his pathetic showings against Clinton back then. There are many GOP senate majority-leader-would-bes waiting for him to make a mistake. Now that he made the mistake, these guys won't pass up the chance to drive him out. In addition, even President Bush gave Lott a quite strong-worded criticism.

[Shi Huangdi]

It looks like Trent Lott may be a goner. But considering how the house speaker is from Illinois, I would think we would need to replace Lott with another southern Senator in order to maintain our strength in that region.

[TCO]

They're going to dump him because the Republicans don't like him anyway. I think the whole thing is a bunch of BS, personally. The guy did not say that he was pro-segregation. Y'all are making a mountain out of a molehill. If we fire every single person for a single stupid remark, there wouldn't be a single person left in Congress.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
It looks like Trent Lott may be a goner. But considering how the house speaker is from Illinois, I would think we would need to replace Lott with another southern Senator in order to maintain our strength in that region.

You already have a Southern President. I think you need a West Coast or Northeast replacement.

[uh Clem]

From Lott's apology, on his relationship with Thurmond:

"It was just that kind of a, you know, platonic , almost father/son relationship that we had."

Well, that certainly clears up those rumors.

[Boris Godunov]

Don Nickles is now saying there should be a referendum on Lott's leadership. Looks like Nickles is making a play for the top Senate job:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021215/ap_on_go_co/lott_28

[TCO]

I think the long knives are starting to look worse than Lott...

[Capt Dizle]

Che sure is enjoying this one. I make the odds 2-1 against Lott remaining. I was surprised by Bush's position on this.

Of all the things that has happened since he came into the White House this is the one thing that is raising red flags in my mind.

[GePap]

Wait, you were surprised that the president of the US came out to denounce the idea of segregation publically, and has not done more of support a man that a)gets his foot in his mouth all too often b) may have done political damage to the party with a portion of the public that already thinks badly of republicans?

The president has handled this well, actually: denounce Lott's idiotic statement, but not the man himself, letting the decision about his head fall unto others, so that Bush get none of the political heat, except from a fringe group that will vote for him anyway, or in some way that does not hurt him politically one bit.

[Imran Siddiqui]

You already have a Southern President. I think you need a West Coast or Northeast replacement.

There is really no one there that is senior enough in the Senate from those areas. You could argue for Specter or Snow... but Nickles or Hegel have much better chances.