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November 15, 2006

don't call it a comeback, i've been racist for years

I guess the Republicans figured that since Corker's victory was their only bright spot on 11/7, that they had better get back to racist basics.

WASHINGTON -- Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, ousted from the top Senate Republican leadership job four years ago because of remarks considered racially insensitive, won election to the chamber's No. 2 GOP post Wednesday.

Asked whether he felt vindicated by the 25-24 secret ballot vote, Lott deferred to newly-elected party leader Mitch McConnell.

"The spotlight belongs on him," Lott said of his Kentucky colleague.

McConnell, who was uncontested and will succeed Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, predicted that he and the rest of the newly-elected GOP team will provide a muscular opposition to the new Democratic majority.

"We will be a robust minority, a vigorous minority, and, hopefully, a minority that is only in that condition for a couple of years," McConnell said.

Lott's comeback-kid victory was generating the most buzz in the Capitol hallways. Pressured to step down from the Senate's top spot over four years ago, Lott returned to the center of power by nosing out Sen. Lamar Alexander, who had made an 18-month bid for the post.

"I'm honored to be a part of this leadership team, to support Mitch McConnell and all of my colleagues and to do a job that I've really loved the most: count the votes," Lott said. "I'll do my very best in that effort."

For his part, Alexander was circumspect.

"Senators, like most Americans, like a comeback," Alexander said afterward, adding that he believes he lost three votes to Lott. [full story]

For those of you who don't recall, Lott got in trouble for saying of Strom Thurmond (h/t atrios):

I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.

That was in 2002. In 1980 he said:

You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today.

And what did Strom Thurmond run on that could have prevented "the mess we are in today?"? Here's his 1948 platform [via L/G/M]:

1. We believe that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest charter of human liberty ever conceived by the mind of man.

2. We oppose all efforts to invade or destroy the rights guaranteed by it to every citizen of this republic.

3. We stand for social and economic justice, which, we believe can be guaranteed to all citizens only by a strict adherence to our Constitution and the avoidance of any invasion or destruction of the constitutional rights of the states and individuals. We oppose the totallitaran, centralized bureaucratic government and the police nation called for by the platforms adopted by the Democratic and Republican Conventions.

4. We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one's associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to learn one's living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.

5. We oppose and condemn the action of the Democratic Convention in sponsoring a civil rights program calling for the elimination of segregation, social equality by Federal fiat, regulations of private employment practices, voting, and local law enforcement.

6. We affirm that the effective enforcement of such a program would be utterly destructive of the social, economic and political life of the Southern people, and of other localities in which there may be differences in race, creed or national origin in appreciable numbers.

7. We stand for the check and balances provided by the three departments of our government. We oppose the usurpation of legislative functions by the executive and judicial departments. We unreservedly condemn the effort to establish in the United States a police nation that would destroy the last vestige of liberty enjoyed by a citizen.

8. We demand that there be returned to the people to whom of right they belong, those powers needed for the preservation of human rights and the discharge of our responsibility as democrats for human welfare. We oppose a denial of those by political parties, a barter or sale of those rights by a political convention, as well as any invasion or violation of those rights by the Federal Government. We call upon all Democrats and upon all other loyal Americans who are opposed to totalitarianism at home and abroad to unite with us in ignominiously defeating Harry S. Truman, Thomas E. Dewey and every other candidate for public office who would establish a Police Nation in the United States of America.

9. We, therefore, urge that this Convention endorse the candidacies of J. Strom Thurmond and Fielding H. Wright for the President and Vice-president, respectively, of the United States of America.

For those of you who don't believe that the above program was (in basic ways) about the right to kill black people with impunity, consider this language from one of Thurmond's offical campaign flyers:

A vote for Truman electors is a direct order to our Congressmen and Senators from Mississippi to vot for passage of Truman's so-called civil-rights program in the next Congress. This means the vicious FEPC - anti-poll tax - anti-lynching and anti-segregation proposals will become the law of the and our way of life in the South will be gone forever. [full flyer]

But I guess all you black conservatives out there who support a party that puts an apologist of lynching in a position of power are thinking: Hold on, now. No need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Those planks about judicial activism and individual rights are right up my alley!

Don't get me wrong about Lott. People change and maybe he has; who can say. But some beliefs and behaviors can put you permanently beyond the pale as far as I'm concerned, and persisting in your praise of the embodiments/avatars of those beliefs and behaviors is no way to come in out of the cold. The problem isn't Lott's friendship with Thurmond (I got a lot of fucked up friends), it's the specific nature of his praise for Thurmond's failed policies, his clearly articulated belief in those policies' enduring rightness, that makes him unacceptable as the whip of any legitimate American political party.

This is an aside, but I am fairly convinced that future generations will treat the GOP's current gay marriage obsession with the same scorn we treat the above segregationist language. I can just picture today's GOP toadies on TV in 30 years disavowing their gay-related bigotry as an artifact of their times, just as Lott whitewashes his longstanding racism today. I mean, who knew black folks were actually human in 1948? Who knew gay people had a right to marry the person of their choice just like any other human being in 2006? It's completely unfair to impose today's standards on the past.

Posted by ebogjonson in politricknal sciences, race and other identities, talking androids, on November 15, 2006 10:29 AM

Comments

Posted by: sly civilian at November 15, 2006 2:22 PM