The Troglodyte. Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss.),
the once and soon-to-be-again Senate Majority Leader, is in hot
water -- and deservedly so -- for failing to censor himself during
a birthday bash for retiring centenarian Sen. Strom Thurmond
(R-S.Carolina).
Lott joked that the country would have been better off if
Thurmond had won the presidency in 1948, when he ran on the
break-away "Dixiecrat" segregationist ticket. Said Lott:
"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."
Those in attendance reportedly gasped.
The story has been widely reported, but most accounts failed to
draw a connection with another significant Lott gaffe, back in
1998, when he compared gays with alcoholics and kleptomaniacs.
Said
Lott then, when asked his view about homosexuality:
"It is [a sin]....You should try to show them a way to deal with that problem, just like alcohol...or sex addiction...or kleptomaniacs."
Trent Lott is not a fire-breathing hater, nor is he an
unreconstructed segregationist. Often it seems he doesn't even
realize the implications of what he's saying. Nevertheless, unlike
George Bush's amusingly twisted syntax, Lott's remarks convey a
political worldview that is rather scary. So why is this man
honored with the powerful position of Majority Leader? For fear of
losing white GOP votes in the "solid South," I suspect. But the way
forward is not tethered to the bigotries of the past, and if the
GOP wants to be the majority party of the future it will have to
come to terms with that fact.
--Stephen H. Miller