From Pine View Farm

The Republican Party Casts Its Lott 0

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who was ousted as Senate majority leader four years ago because of what some interpreted as racially insensitive remarks about America’s segregationist past, made a surprise comeback today by being elected to his party’s No. 2 spot in the chamber by a single vote after lobbying hard for the job.

Does that mean that Bob Novak was correct

. . . For good reason, the GOP often is called “the stupid party.”

While an unpopular Iraq war and an unpopular George W. Bush were primary causes of last Tuesday’s Republican rout, massive public disapproval of the Republican-controlled Congress significantly contributed. While abandoning conservative principles, the spendthrift House had become chained to special corporate interests represented by K Street lobbyists.

Jonah Goldberg weighs in here. (Yeah, I know I linked to this in my previous post, but he covered a lot of ground.)

The remarks that led to Lott’s loss of position are pretty well known.

Of course, the issue was not that he said that if the country had elected segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond to the presidency “30 years ago, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.”

The issue was the blind lack of awareness of how saying something like that, about a person who ran for the Presidency on a segretation platform, in public might somehow have reverberations.

Dammit, after the century of the civil rights struggle, someone who is not able to realize what he should not say in public (private is another matter) offends the national decorum, if nothing else. And his selection to this post indicates that his political colleagues endorse that offense.

But at least his house will be rebuilt, if not his Senate.

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