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Thread 4028

Thread ID: 4028 | Posts: 9 | Started: 2002-12-15

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il ragno [OP]

2002-12-15 18:11 | User Profile

The wolves are circling the campfire's embers now. "Say the America you grew up believing in is IMMORAL!" these jackals snarl, shaking a fist and prodding:"Sayyyy it...!"

Wow. Who needs Commies? They're here already, and the re-education program is steady-pumpin' daily out of our tvs and newspapers. And anybody who plans on living inside the USA - but outside of a cave - had better know, right now, that Iconoclasts Will Be Shot. A woman's right to butcher a helpless baby with a suction hose - or a superpower's right to brandish nuclear weapons at a tinpot sh*thole in the name of disarmament(!)...these are stained-glass sacrosanct principles; it's the right of free association that's now "immoral". Remember "loyalty oaths" in the 1950s? Turns out they're back, only now you swear them to MLK with your back turned to the Wichita Four as they bleed to death in the stained snow.

[url=http://www.msnbc.com/news/847739.asp?cp1=1]http://www.msnbc.com/news/847739.asp?cp1=1[/url]

Ghosts of the Past ** It was a Washington classic: History suddenly rears up and threatens a safe pol’s security. Anatomy of the Lott firestorm

By Howard Fineman NEWSWEEK

  Dec. 23 issue —  Mitch McConnell, who loves his role as Washington’s coldest-blooded tough guy, got right to the point in a cross-country conference call last Friday night with a score of his fellow Republican senators. The topic: what to do about The Leader?

TRENT LOTT had just finished his fourth, and most fulsome, apologia for having praised Strom Thurmond’s stridently segregationist presidential campaign of 1948. Many GOP bosses—in and out of the White House—still wanted Lott bounced from his role as majority leader when the Congress returns next month. Lott, in their view, had come across as too much of a “seg,” an embarrassment in a party eager to sell itself as a Big Tent of “compassionate conservatism.”

As the call began, McConnell—second in command and a Lott ally—delivered a history lesson. “Leaders who are ousted tend to leave altogether,” he said in his voice-of-doom baritone. “That is what Newt Gingrich did. That is what Jim Wright did. They don’t stick around.” If Lott left, he noted, the Democratic governor of Lott’s home state of Mississippi would name one of his own as a replacement. Republicans relishing the return of perks, power and committee chairmanships could forget it. Instead, they would face the kiss-your-sister chaos of a 50-50 Senate. “I was just explaining the history,” McConnell told NEWSWEEK. Other participants remember the moment differently. “He was raising the idea that Trent would blow himself up,” said one. Lott, for his part, distanced himself from the threat—even as aides still were making it on his behalf. “My term runs through 2006,” he told NEWSWEEK. “I intend to serve it, whatever happens.”

 This was Lott’s lot late last week: confident enough to discuss the possibility of losing his leader’s role—because, his aides contended, he felt he wouldn’t lose it. Still, behind the scenes, he was desperately trying to cajole support from colleagues warily assessing whether the perfect storm that had engulfed him would abate—or sweep him into oblivion. No one talked of a coup attempt. (“It would be pretty stupid to do that on a conference call,” said one participant.) But a suggestion for a second meeting-by-phone went unheeded, as did an idea, floated by a handful of senators in cross talk, for a signed letter of support.

MORE POWER THAN FRIENDS The rise and folly of Trent Lott is a classical Washington saga. Here is the plotline: A politician with more power than friends fails to see that times have changed. Oblivious, even giddy, he mistakenly calls attention to an obvious fact about himself that the establishment, for a variety of reasons, has tolerated or ignored. Suddenly, he’s too outrageous for words, and he becomes the scapegoat for a city determined to show its moral rectitude. Think: Tony Coelho and money, Gary Hart and sex. And now Lott and the Southern, segregationist roots of the GOP.

    All of Washington understood that Lott, proud of his background in the Mississippi of the ’50s, was among the last—and most visible—of the Hill barons to have grown up in the segregated Deep South. He had begun his career as a staffer to an ardently segregationist congressman. Blacks have a dim view of his record—against the Voting Rights Act, against a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, in favor of racially restrictive policies at Bob Jones University. Yet these days George W. Bush is trying to portray the GOP as an inclusive party, one that reaches out to all minorities and conveys an aura of tolerance to affluent white suburbanites looking for an alternative to the Democrats. With the GOP back in power on the Hill, and Bush’s pushing centrist themes, Lott was —suddenly in a bigger—more dangerous—spotlight. “He was an accident waiting to happen,” said a GOP strategist.

 The accident happened, the world now knows, at Thurmond’s 100th-birthday party on Capitol Hill. Thinking he was only among friends—or perhaps in Pascagoula, Miss., in the ’60s—Lott buttered up the honoree by proclaiming jovially that the country wouldn’t have “all these problems” had the Dixiecrats won power in 1948. There were gasps when Lott uttered his remarks. There was enough of a sense of history in the room to know that Lott was praising one of the nastiest, openly racial campaigns of modern times. “People were shocked,” said conservative Armstrong Williams, who was on hand for the festivities.

INEPT DAMAGE CONTROL The ensuing controversy gathered force slowly, helped along by some of the most inept damage control since the Maginot Line was built. Lott first said, dismissively, that he was “winging it”—until it was discovered that he had said the same thing 22 years earlier. Lott made this and other press “appearances” by phone while holed up with his wife on vacation in Key West, Fla. His aides assured White House officials that he would utter the key words “segregation is immoral” on “Larry King,” but he somehow forgot to do so. Bush went ballistic at this point. He also heard that GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel was about to denounce Lott. The president ordered up a harsh condemnation of Lott’s remarks. “Senator Lott has apologized, and rightly so,” a stern-visaged Bush said. Lott got the message, and scheduled his full-dress press conference—with the proper wording included—for the following day.

The usually brotherly Bush failed to praise Lott personally in any way, leaving it to underlings to issue bland statements of support for Lott as leader. That, in turn, encouraged many conservatives, including the editors of The Wall Street Journal and The National Review, to demand Lott’s ouster. But White House officials, afraid of offending “the base”—the Southern white conservatives who elected Lott and Bush—were careful not to openly work for Lott’s ouster. “They don’t want any fingerprints on this,” said one GOP strategist. Democrats were glad to make trouble, but—on second thought—liked the idea of keeping him around as a convenient target.

   As for Lott, he sounded like a man trying to stay calm in a hurricane. He’d been reared in a different day and time, he said. He wasn’t the angry young man he was—no longer “the hot-blooded Scot.” “My daughter told me I’m much calmer than I used to be,” he said. “I’ve grown more mature and accepting as a result of deepening religious faith.” **Now he knew that his early views were wrong, unacceptable and, yes, immoral.** Whether he was telling the truth about his beliefs was a question to be decided in Another, Better, Place. For now, the more urgent issue was whether Lott had testified in time to help himself in Washington.

With Eleanor Clift and Martha Brant

   © 2002 Newsweek, Inc.

xmetalhead

2002-12-16 15:24 | User Profile

IR, thanks for the article. Yes, it's quite a sad time in history for our country, although the televitz constantly tells us things are just swell in Amerika! But to equate segregation as "immoral" is a sign of the deep sickness our country is suffering. It's so sick that the morphine drip is on full blast and millions are numb to the coming collapse that is clearly inevitable. We are like the Soviets of yesteryear. It's going to get alot worse before it gets better.

jay

2002-12-16 15:34 | User Profile

When Sen. Byrd said the "n-word" on Meet The Press last year and it was discovered he was a former KKK member, I didn't hear much about it.

Wonder why?

-J

xmetalhead

2002-12-16 16:31 | User Profile

Good point Jay. I thought I'd expand on your point even further, although a different country is called to mind. How about a President of a country who openly and brazenly calls for the deaths of Whites??? How many Newsweek front page articles were run? How much top story news coverage does the tragedy in Zimbabwe receive? How many lemmings in the USA know where Zimbabwe is? Where's Jesse, Al, Kweisi? Where are the pundits heavily condemning open genocidal plans by a madman black president? Where are all the pundits screaming for Mudgabe's resignation? Where are all the bleeding-heart-race-means-nothing-we-are-all-human-beings all night candle vigils until the hate stops in Zimbabwe? I think all of us know why.

jay

2002-12-16 16:46 | User Profile

Originally posted by xmetalhead@Dec 16 2002, 09:24 But to equate segregation as "immoral" is a sign of the deep sickness our country is suffering.

                yep.  It is very sick and I don't see any cure ahead of us.

Strom was a judge (meaning, he earned his academic marks unlike Jorge Bush) who flew a plane in WWII at age 39. Bushie avoided war, partied in Harvard, had a coke problem and his wife threatened to leave him.

Who is the hero? I know who I'd want on my side or neighborhood. I'm not a Southerner but I'm fast becoming one.

-Jay

solutrian

2002-12-17 15:49 | User Profile

Perhaps the most disgusting feature of this episode is Lott groveling before before his enemies. He has shown no resolve before , and now rendering himself to be no more politically effective in the future than would be a cross-dresser at a biker rally. Why not go down as a man? Tell the bastards what you really believe and have done with it.

MadScienceType

2002-12-17 22:44 | User Profile

It's all over for the Gomer Pyle from Ole Miss. (Can't you just see Lott going, "Suhprise, suhprise, suhprise!!" on his BET interview?)

At this point, Lott could shoot his entire family and commit ritual suicide with a can of gasoline on the steps of the Capitol and still, still, Spike Lee and the usual suspects would accuse him of not doing enough to foster racial healing. Kristol would no doubt mutter that he took the coward's way out and should have offered to donate his kidneys to an African American dialysis patient before his death.

Now if he sponsored a reparations bill right before doing the above, they might let him off with just hanging his body from the Capitol flagpole for a week, instead of the prescribed month.

jay

2002-12-17 23:19 | User Profile

You have to realize that Mr. Lott has gotten quite used to the power he's had in D.C. And the importance he had. Factor in the great ballroom evenings he had with dignitaries and you have a man who won't let go.

He'll do anything - even strip naked and run thru town - to stay in D.C.

-J

Faust

2002-12-17 23:52 | User Profile

Dec. 16, 2002 5:45 p.m. EST

Sen. Kyl: Lott a 'Block' to GOP Election Victory

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, about to be third in command on the GOP side of the Senate, said the aftermath of Lott's remarks has been as bad as the comments themselves.

"I thought he could it put it behind him with genuine apologies. But I don't think the apologies appeared to be emotional and genuine enough," Kyl told KFYI Radio in Phoenix today. "This thing has spun out of control ... it?s not going to be contained."

Kyl, who will be chairman of the Republican policy committee in the next session, was concerned about the GOP's control of the Senate if the majority leader is deposed. "You don?t just step aside from your leadership position. Ordinarily you say: 'My colleagues have chastised me, I've been humiliated, and I ain't going to hang around here anymore.'

"I can't conceive of that happening in Trent's case because it would conceivably give the majority to the Democrats."

But Kyl added that a return by Lott to Pascagoula may be attractive for the senator. "Put yourself in his position: You've just been humiliated by the media, your opposition and now your colleagues, but they want you to hang around to make sure they still have a majority. It's hard to make it work that way."

He mourned: "We had taken the House, Senate and presidency ... all kinds of really exciting, great things about to happen, and then this happens."

Kyl said the wind has been taken from his sails. "We had a great opportunity, and this is going to put a block to that."

Democrats and black leaders are among those calling for Lott's removal, but it was conservative activists for whom Kyl had a special message. "I have criticized Trent before for being too much of a dealmaker," Kyl said. "But these same people who didn't like Trent to begin with now want us to immediately throw him overboard."

Kyl would not predict what might happen at the party conference on Lott scheduled for Jan. 6, but said the GOP must keep the big picture in mind.

"We have a responsibility not just to ourselves and not just to our constituents ... but frankly to Republicans all over the country to try to put ourselves in the best position we can to help to carry out the president's goals ... and represent our constituents."

Sen. Hagel: 'Poison Ivy'

With 51 Republicans in the next session of the Senate, it would take 26 votes to call back Lott's leadership role, to which he was elected last month.

GOP Sens. Conrad Burns of Montana, John Warner of Virginia and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska supported a meeting soon of the rank and file to deal with the controversy.

Republicans "must either reconfirm their confidence in Senator Trent Lott's leadership or select a new leader," Hagel said. "In the interest of the Republican Party, the president's agenda and the nation, this issue must be resolved quickly."

He likened the fuss to "poison ivy" infecting the party.

Sen. Hutchison: 'His Ability to Lead'

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, Republican conference vice chairman, issued a statement today on the Jan. 6 meeting about Lott.

"Republican senators are working all over their states during December, and we have not had the opportunity to come together to discuss the developments on this issue. I believe the matter to be vitally important for all Republican senators to discuss as a group, and the need for a meeting is clear.

"Senator Lott has apologized and is doing everything he can to make this situation right. This meeting will provide Republican senators the opportunity for a full and open discussion about Senator Lott and his ability to lead the Republican majority." '

[url=http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2002/12/16/173913]http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.sht...02/12/16/173913[/url]