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By Greg Kay
I have watched the controversy swirling around Mississippi Senator Trent Lott with some interest. There are several things going on here that need to be considered on a much deeper level than the terminally shallow Republican Party wishes to address, or the hysterical press wants to discuss.
For those who don’t know, Lott, at South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, made the comment that we’d all be a lot better off if Strom had won the 1948 presidential race.
Then all hell broke loose.
Strom Thurmond had many issues in his platform; predictably, the one the press, the Democrats, and Lott’s fellow cannibalistic Republicans chose to fix their teeth upon was his stand on race. Strom Thurmond was (GASP!) a segregationist.
In other words, Strom Thurmond was a traditional Southerner; a word translated in modernese as evil incarnate.
Make no mistake; if Thurmond had taken the oval office, this country would be an entirely different place, and different for the better. (Our involvement in he Korean War comes to mind, for one instance.) However, that is not the real issue. The real issue here is that the NAACP, the Democrats, the Republicans, the press, and now Lott himself, through his apologies, have all essentially called all your father, and every traditional Southern father, a “no good son of a _____!”
Are we going to take that from them?
I mean it; what they have done is a blatant insult to every Southerner because, according to them, the traditional and once virtually universal beliefs held by Southerners were evil and wrong; and thus, by extension, the people who held them, our fathers and many of our people now, are likewise evil and wrong.
As the great philosopher Yosemite Sam said, “Them’s fightin’ words!”
“Them’s also provin’ words!” Take a look at what’s been proven by this latest Vaudeville stage comedy in DC.
The Democrats, NAACP, and other liberals have proven to be exactly what we always knew they were – liberal, neo-Communist humanists, imbued with a deep and abiding hatred of all things Southern. No surprise there.
George Bush has proven, along with most other Republicans, to be a Democrat in outlook, and a classic Republican in courage, or more particularly the lack there of. After loudly proclaiming to all and sundry that he had his self-righteous panties in a Gordian knot over Lott’s “racist” remarks, he immediately crawfished in a predictable manner under the rock of neutrality after Lott staffers informed him that if Lott was forced to resign from the Senate leadership, he would likely resign from his seat as well, leaving Mississippi’s Democratic governor to appoint his replacement. Faced with his greatest fear – a 50/50 Senate that might cease to be a rubber stamp – Dubya prudently shut up about the whole thing. His great moral outrage be damned; the possible frustration of his dictatorial powers was just too high of a price to pay.
And then we come to Trent Lott himself.
First, did Lott mean what he said, and was he talking about Thurmond’s segregation policies at all, or just the grand old senator’s platform in general? (Thurmond himself has repudiated his political “heresy” of segregation long ago, but that’s another story.) Well, Lott did make a nearly identical statement back in 1982, and he took a little heat for it back then, as I recall, so unless he has a short memory, he must have known what to expect.
So, did he mean it, or was he just giving lips service and pandering to the so-called “Bubba vote,” the rural white Southerners who are the backbone of the remaining traditional South? Either way, he failed miserably and in doing so, he proved something else.
He proved his cowardice, and he proved that he did not represent his constituents: the people who voted for him.
When Lott backed down and began his penance of crawling on his knees to the Jerusalem of political correctness, endlessly repenting while accepting the ritual scourging from the self-appointed watchdogs of society, he proved, in this writer’s opinion, to be an abject coward. A man, a Southern man in particular, would have stood up on his hind legs and defended his beliefs, whatever they happened to be, and not apologized for them.
Trent Lott needs to remember that he is not responsible to the NAACP, George Dubya Bush, or the Republican Party; Trent Lott is responsible to the people of Mississippi who voted for him; the very same class of people who voted for Strom Thurmond in 1948: Southerners.
The truth is, plain and simple, that pleasing the black community of Mississippi is not going to do Lott much good, since only 5% to a maximum of 10% of blacks, who are already in the minority, ever vote for Republicans, no matter how much the GOP grovels to them. Take a look at the famous red and blue map of the last presidential election; Republican Bush carried the South, even though over 90% of black voters cast their ballots against him. That should tell something to the thinking man: namely, that the black voting block’s much-vaunted power exists only in perception, not in reality. That’s not racism; that’s truth.
Trent Lott’s playing to his opponents at the expense of his natural constituency is more than bad politics; many Southerners consider it a form of betrayal. I’m certain that he will feel their displeasure sharply during the next election, unless he bows out completely as many of his detractors demand.
Of course, it could be even worse if he maintains his leadership position. If he manages to pull it off with his continuous butt kissing, he will then owe the people who hate the South for their allowing him to continue to exist, and he will owe them big-time! When they come to collect, it’s going to be hard on Dixie – if we sit back and allow it.
So, should Lott resign? In my opinion, yes; not for telling the truth, but for apologizing for it, thus calling that truth a lie, and agreeing with his detractors’ insults against Dixie and its people.
Besides, if a man can’t stand for something, what good is he?
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