🚀 go-pugleaf

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/11/politics/11LOTT.html

below are some excerpts from the article.  Particular note 
should be made of the fact that some moderate republicans are 
becoming disenchanted with the overt racism bubbling to the 
top in this administration.  

It is becoming quite evident that blacks and other minorities 
are okay as underlings, but they must know their 'place'.  
Sadly Harry Bellafonte not the brightest entertainer may have 
been correct in his assessment of Colin Powell as a 'house 
slave'.

The term racist and racism have been widely abused in the last 
few years, and most Americans I honestly believe do not think 
that the old fashioned segregationist racist still exists.  
They are wrong, the South is still as racist as ever, it is 
just kept under the sheets better. ;(   Does these bastards 
exist outside of the South?  Of course they do.  But if you 
find yourself in California and overhear a racist slur, odds 
oare two to one the speaker has a suthrin' accent, sometimes a 
phoney wannabe but accent none the less.

It's time for the Republican Party to clean out the closets 
and rid itself of every last Dixiecrat in its ranks.  As for 
the Democratic Party it is way past time for it to rid itself 
of the influence of self serving pariahs such as Jesse Jackson 
and Al Sharpton.  For it is those types who keep pouring on 
the fuel necessary to keep racist fires burning.

Monte

(excerpts)
New York Times
December 11, 2002
Lott's Praise for Thurmond Echoed His Words of 1980
By CARL HULSE

 
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 � Trent Lott, the Republican Senate leader 
who faces mounting criticism for his comment last week that 
the nation would have been better off had Strom Thurmond been 
elected president in 1948, expressed a nearly identical 
sentiment two decades ago.

After a fiery speech by Mr. Thurmond at a campaign rally in 
Mississippi for Ronald Reagan in November 1980, Mr. Lott, then 
a congressman, told a crowd in Jackson, "You know, if we had 
elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we 
are today."

Last week, in remarks he later characterized as spontaneous 
and a poor choice of words, Mr. Lott repeated his opinion 
about Mr. Thurmond, who ran for president on a Dixiecrat 
platform opposing "social intermingling of the races."

At the party for Mr. Thurmond's 100th birthday, Mr. Lott said: 
"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."
...
But the senator from Mississippi was attacked today with fresh 
complaints about his comments, as well as calls to step aside 
as Republican leader. Even some conservatives suggested that 
Mr. Lott had become a detriment to the Republican Party. 

The White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, found himself 
having to defend Mr. Lott, saying President Bush has 
"confidence in him as the Republican leader, unquestionably." 

The fact that Mr. Lott uttered similar comments in 1980 
threatened to intensify the controversy. The quotation was in 
a report on Nov. 3, 1980, in The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson and 
was cited in the introduction of a dissertation by a 
historian, Joseph Crespino, who is writing a book on civil 
rights and political culture in Mississippi.

...
Even without knowing of the earlier quotation, critics of Mr. 
Lott called on him to quit his post, saying this was not his 
first misstep. They recalled that he appeared in the 90's 
before the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group whose 
leaders have expressed extremist racial views.

"If Senator Lott's remarks last week were an isolated 
incident, we would be willing to accept his apology as truly 
genuine," said a statement by Wade Henderson, executive 
director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "His 
record, however, speaks far more loudly than his words alone."

...
Some conservatives, who have had disputes with Mr. Lott, said 
his statements would feed the impression among some minorities 
that Republicans are intolerant. The president of the Family 
Research Council, Kenneth Conner, said Mr. Lott's remarks had 
done considerable damage.

Besides the White House, other Republicans went to Mr. Lott's 
defense, including Representative J. C. Watts of Oklahoma, the 
lone black Republican in Congress. Mr. Watts, who was in the 
leadership before retiring this year, said he did not believe 
that Mr. Lott needed to relinquish his position. "We should 
not trivialize the issue of race for political gain," he said.

Mr. Crespino, a fellow at George Mason University in Fairfax, 
Va., ..."I couldn't believe he said it in 1980, let alone 
2002," he said. "These kinds of appeals to the racist right 
have been the G.O.P.'s dirty little secret for years."
Copyright The New York Times Company