So I guess the point you just made is that 100 year old men from the south are racists?
That old fart Robert Bird of West Virginia was celebrating his 1,700 vote on the Senate floor and Chris Dodd said that Robert Bird would have been a great great political leader during the civil war, when the country was founded, etc. etc. Well, read this my fine feathered democrat dudes. Robert Bird was a member and recruiter for the KKK!! He voted against lots of legislation granting equal rights to minorities. His royal foreverness in the senate was real good at getting hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars wasted (oh, sorry, spent) in WV.
When Trent Lott said one little stupid thing about the 100 year old fart, Strom Thurmond: Saying he would have been a good President of the U.S. at Strom's 100 birthday party. OH MY GOD, TRENT IS A RACIST. Katie the cat scratcher Couric, Tom broken brain Brokaw and Dan butt head Rather all soiled their underpants right on national TV. They demanded that Lott resign from the majority leader position. Some people demanded he resign from the senate.
So I guess the point you just made is that 100 year old men from the south are racists?
Last time I checked, the reason that Trent Lott was ousted from his position as majority leader in the Senate, is because he lost the support of his GOP senators. That, and the fact that GW wanted Lott out and his man (Frist) in.
Democrats and the "mainstream" media had nothing to do with it, except to act as camouflage for the hatchet job. Indeed, if you compare Lott and Frist, Democrats would probably much prefer dealing with Lott.
But you know, I am sort of feeling nostalgic for the days of George Senior. At least he worked well with others, which can hardly be said about George Jr.
What color is the sky on your planet?
There was plenty of dissatisfaction with Lott, but there's no doubt that he would have remained Senate Majority Leader but for the media hatchet job. No one in the Senate would have had the guts to go after him absent that.
Hmm! I must have been misinformed - I had no idea that the Republicans always did the bidding of Democrats and "mainstream media".
However, I do seem to recall that there was a similar 'firestorm' over Rick Santorum (holds #3 Senate leadership slot) and his gay-bashing comments. I guess he must have lost his Senate-GOP leadership position too. Let me check Google. No, Santorum's right where he always was.
Maybe my theory that Lott's comments simply gave the GOP cover to get rid of him isn't so wrong after all.
I am so glad that that wimp Trent Lott is not senate mmajority leader. He's the one of the GOP dudes who voted against the senate trial of Willie Clinton after his impeachment. Most likely Willie would have got off (hehehehe)but it would have been good to put him thru the trial in the senate. And I believe- it would have been good for the country.
P.S. Long live and Godspeed to St. George Bush.
Because you butchered a historical fact. There WAS an impeachment trial for Clinton in the US Senate. The trial had prosecutors assigned by the House after Clinton was impeached by the House. Those prosecutors presented their case against Clinton. After the trial, the Senate voted not to remove Clinton from office. I do not know how Lott voted, but his vote probaly would not have made a difference given the independent and principled way that Senators think and vote. The only other US president that went the route that Clinton did was Andrew Johnson, who was impeached by the House but kept in office by the Senate after his impeachment trial. Richard Nixon probaly would have been impeached for his role in the Watergate breakin coverup, but it is unknown whether he would have been removed from office, even if he had chosen to face impeachment by the House and a trial in the Senate.
You are misinformed, though I reject your straw man. It's not that "Republicans always [do] the bidding of Democrats and 'mainstream media'"; it's that SOME Republicans do SOMEtimes. Witness media panderers John McCain and John "Foghorn Leghorn" Warner.
Santorum survived for a number of reasons. First, his comments were not succesfully spun as "gay-bashing"; second, who cares, anyway?
And my point wasn't that you were necessarily wrong. My point was that, BUT FOR the media firestorm and race-baiting, Lott would have survived in his leadership post. A related point is that it demonstrates the gutlessness of the GOP for getting rid of ineffectual legislative leaders. There was plenty of desire to push on the part of some of his colleagues; no one would have had the guts to do so absent the media and Democrat race-baiting.
The Democrats would have LOVED to have Lott remain the Majority Leader, so they could hang him and his antidiluvian ideas around the neck of every Republican running for elections.
The fact is, the Republicans KNOW that blatant racism is noxious, because it can no longer sell to 90% of the population.
Old fart Bird was a member and recruiter for the KKK and Chris Dodd said that he would be a great man in America at any time in its history: 200 plus years ago, during the civil war, etc. Now, I know Dodd was just saying nice things to old-fart-spend-the-federal-tax-money-in-West-Virginia-Bird but the media did not say one peep.
On the other hand, at Strom Thurmand's 100th birthday party when Lott said he would have been a good president. (Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat Democrat in 194? something. Thurmond was a segregationist back then but he changed). The media went nuts and demanded that the Republicans punish Lott. And they branded all Republicans as racists.
You are absolutely right ... we WANTED Trent Lott to remain the Speaker, as he BEST crystallized the face of this Republican adminstration ... I even appealed to both Diane Feinstein and Boxer not to push his ouster.
What better than his remarks illustrate this group:
"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!"
When I first heard of it, I couldn't wait till someone asks him what "all these problems over all these years" are!!!
-- Modified on 4/10/2004 5:37:45 PM
I agree with much of this. Democrats are, of course, nonsensical race-baiters and opportunists, and would have loved to continue to lie about Trent Lott's ideas --- he's clearly not a racist, and enjoys broad support among Blacks in Mississippi --- in order to beat up the GOP. Unfortunately, many in the GOP lack the guts to challenge the Democrat race hustlers, even though an increasing number of Blacks are leaving the Liberal plantation.
I also agree that blatant racism is obnoxious. And, like most Conservatives, I reject true racism ab initio. Unfortunately, too many Americans --- and most in the so-called "mainstream" media and the Demoncrats --- are too stupid to recognize the difference between racism and trying to say something complimentary to a 100-year-old man who made perhaps the most amazing political journey in American history on race.
Finally, I would disagree that the GOP has EVER tried to sell racism to any of the population. Most opponents of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were southern DEMONCRATS. The GOP led the nation in a Civil War to end slavery for Blacks. It was Democrat Woodrow Wilson who RE-segregated the Federal government. It was the GOP who made Klansman David Duke persona non grata when he tried to claim the GOP banner in Louisiana, even causing Ronald Reagan to violate his so-called "Eleventh Commandment."
The GOP has gotten a bad rap over the years. And it's not because of any inherent racism in the party or its policies. It's because the greatest thinkers in the GOP are not willing to bastardize the Constitution in order to pander to any discrete, insular group, and because most in the GOP believe in the great dissent of Justice John Marshall Harlan in Plessy v. Ferguson, which validated segregation: "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among its citizens."
which, of course, were used by the Bush 1 campaign to defeat Dukakis. One thing about death-bed confessions. They almost always involve a true baring of the soul in hope of receiving absolution. Lee Atwater's deathbed confessions were quite informative in terms of how much he owned up to the blatant, and fully knowledgeable use of race-baiting in the Bush 1 campaign with Dukakis.
It's understandable that sdstud would want to rely upon the comments of a man probably in dementia because of his affliction. So many of sdstud's posts seem motivated by dementia.
Of course, blaming racism for Willie Horton is nonsense. In the first place, the whole issue was first raised by Algore, as the suggestion of Mario Cuomo. If raising the issue was racist, then the far Left should place blame where it properly lies: with Cuomo and Gore.
In the second place, the Bush ad never put Horton's picture in it or mentioned his race, so how could it be racist? The picture was used in an independent expenditure ad by Floyd Brown of Citizens United.
Once again, sdstud's conclusions are based upon false premises.
Maybe Atwater's comment was based upon the same misguided reliance upon the Liberal media as sdstud's.
When the words and actions of your own allies disprove your lame position that the Republicans have NEVER pandered to racism. BTW, Atwater coordinated the ENTIRE Willie Horton campaign. Including the "independent" expenditures. And, BTW, are you claiming that Floyd Brown was NOT a republican who used a racist tactic to help Bush 1 get elected?
And you also never addressed the VERY well known Nixon Southern Strategy, to capture all the racists who formerly were Democrats, but had been dumped by the Kennedy and Johnson policies in favor of Civil Rights movement.
-- Modified on 4/26/2004 8:15:39 PM
Accusing your own deceased allies of becoming delusional when their own actions and words disprove your meager assertions. You should be ashamed of yourself.
When he ran for President in 1968, Nixon made a very overt appeal to the southern states that he would try to get the makeup of the Warren Court changed so that the various civil rights rulings could be overturned by putting "strict constructionists" on the court when elected. And when he was elected, two of his nominees to the court were a couple of southern segregationists by the names of Clement Haynesworth and G. Harold Carswell. While Haynesworth could have been argued to have been a well qualified jurist, but for some questionable rulings on segregation in his earlier history, and was likely just a man of his time and place, Carswell was an out and out racist bigot who NOBODY even remotely impartial considered to be qualified for a Supreme Court post. Fortunately for this nation, these two nominees were rejected and sent to the dust-bin of history, and Harry Blackmun, (who, to Nixon's chagrin, turned out to be a moderate and one of the great jurists in the history of the court), was the third nominee for the post.
And the part you DON'T agree with, you oversimplify or are just plain WRONG about. Those southern Dixiecrats of the '50s and early '60s, all converted to the Republican party, because the Democrats no longer represented their views, and the Republicans did. This was the fundamental lynchpin of Nixon's "Southern Strategy" of the 1968 election. And it worked. He got elected by pandering to those racists who HAD been Democrats in the 1950s, but were alienated by the Warren Court and the Kennedy and Johnson-driven Civil Rights legislation. And that fundamental shift has been the driving force in national politics in the U.S. ever since. The Democrats pander to the Blacks in the south, and the Republicans pander to the whites. Neither is better or worse, it just IS WHAT IT IS. It started with Nixon, and it continues up through the current day. Lee Atwater owned up to it publicly on his death bed - He used it to get Bush the 1st elected, by coming up with the Willie Horton campaign. To deny that this racial divide actually exists, and has been played to by BOTH parties, is simply naive, and it shows just how uninformed you are, James86.
which was where he intentionally pandered to the bigots and racists who HAD been Dixiecrats in the late '50s and early '60s, but were dissaffected by the Kennedy and Johnson administration's friendliness to the civil rights movement. This is rather amazing, because it was the single most important shift in American Politics since WWII, and it is the REASON that Republicans have tended to carry the South ever since 1968.
I think it is great the GOP has a man like Bill Frist as a leader.
Bill First is a man who when in medical school, went to pet shelters, lied to the people so he could get kittens to take home and butcher alive.
The man admitted it in his autobiography that he vivisectioned the cats because the med school didn't have enough cats for him to dissect.
THAT is an example of the values the GOP wants in it's leaders.
TET.
Aside from the fact that he's a Republican, of course.
From one Geezer to another, grow up!
The Senate GOP picks it's leadership - not the media. The Republicans were the only people voting to oust Lott. Nobody else got a vote. If they want to toss Lott to the mob: they lack political courage and they need to take the heat (if any exists) for their decision.
Bird has matured, changed, contributed to the Senate and he is respected by many. He does not have a leadership position: he can't be ousted from anything.
-- Modified on 4/12/2004 1:25:24 PM
... for his remarks at Thurmond's Birthday. If you speak at such an event, you aren't there to provide some critical examination of his mistakes in life. The "political correctness" people that complained about his remarks were, IMO, assholes. If that was the reason he was tossed as majority leader, the GOP has a problem. I don't think it was.
If I had my druthers, Mr Lott would still be Majority Leader. The most viable parties have people from many camps that can whisper in the leader's ear (and smart leaders encourage this kind of thing). I hope that there are people around Mr Bush that have his interests and the GOP's interests at heart, but disagree with Mr Bush's closest advisors when they feel it is appropriate. More important, I hope the Majority Leader works hard to maintain the perogitives of the Senate. Those perogitives have saved the ccountry from precipitious actions in the past.
My $0.02. Harry
, even when controlled by the same party as the President, is an important part of our very valid system of checks and balances.
violation of Senate rules. This is as it should be. He represents first and foremost, the people of his state.
-- Modified on 4/13/2004 5:35:12 PM
... He can be ousted from a leadership post in the Senate which chooses it's own leaders.
If you look, he had a habit of letting slip some very offensive things when he thought he could get away with it. He just didn't get away with it that time.
And his punishment was demotion from Majority Leader to mere Senator.
/Zin