Bush and Rove know something that has never occurred to Lott: that the original foundation of the modern GOP is something to bury below ground–not talk about, let alone praise, today. And Strom Thurmond is the symbol of that history.
The modern GOP–the GOP of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush–was built from the Old South up. Its roots lie in Thurmond’s segregationist Dixiecrats. He won four Cotton South states in 1948, running as a rebel from Harry Truman’s pro-integration Democrats on a strident segregation now and forever platform. It’s true that, in the ’50s and early ’60s, Northern Republicans helped enact civil rights laws. But Barry Goldwater went in the other direction as the GOP candidate in 1964. After LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Goldwater married his anti-federal conservative philosophy with racial rejectionism to win the South–but only the South–in that year. Reagan’s own conservative crusade began in that soil. He campaigned for Goldwater in 1964, and the contacts he made on the hustings, especially in the South, formed the basis of a new generation of conservative activists.
Today the GOP’s money and political base runs in an arc that stretches from Dallas to Richmond. It was fortified in November by GOP wins in South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida. But Bush & Co. try, with much justification, to explain that the region isn’t populated by the “segs” of the old days. The New South is growing as diverse and as racially tolerant (or intolerant) as the rest of the country. The problem isn’t now, it’s then.
White Americans don’t see the big deal about the Confederate flag. Blacks think it’s a very big deal–and protested in South Carolina until it was removed from the capitol dome in Columbia. Even worse is the notion of praising Thurmond’s 1948 campaign–the Stars and Bars in action in presidential politics. It simply isn’t done.
Lott comes from a time and place–Mississippi in the ’50s and early ’60s–when segregation was a way of life and defending it was still a route to power. He was a cheerleader at Ole Miss and has been cheerleading for the old days ever since. As a young congressman, he filed a friend of the court brief in favor of preserving the right of Bob Jones University to bar blacks from admission. Lott, by the way, was eventually joined by the Reagan administration itself. A year before that he said what he repeated the other week: that the country would have been better off had Strom won election in 1948.
I’ve covered Lott for quite some time and find him to be a courteous, gentlemanly fellow in person. But I think he just is incapable of understanding how offensive it is even to joke–even at Strom’s birthday–about a segregationist campaign.
As usual in Washington, the statement itself isn’t as damaging as his reaction to having made it. Indeed, when he first made his comments at Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, none of the reporters watching the event gave the remarks a second thought. It was only two days later, when The Washington Post explained the history that Lott had invoked, that the brushfire began. Lott and his aides fanned it into a raging forest fire by issuing a series of grudging and obtuse statements that didn’t quite apologize–and just made more people angry.
Now Lott is in the midst of what you sometimes see here in the capital: the political equivalent of a perfect storm. Isolated weather patterns merge into a destructive gale force. Lott is in the midst of such a storm, and he’ll be lucky to survive it.
This storm was created by: Lott’s thickheadness and lack of media savvy; his amazing blindness toward the unpalatability of segregation; an African-American bloc in Congress that feels empowered after saving a Democratic Senate seat in Louisiana; a white Democratic leadership, unable to attack Bush, eager to go after someone–anyone–in a prominent position on the Republican side; a White House that long ago came to view Lott as something of a clod; and a GOP dependent on, yet (in a multicultural era) uncomfortable with, its roots.
The Dems, having found something to chew on, will continue to do so. Al Gore and Sen. John Kerry have both called for Lott to step down as GOP leader, and other leading Democrats in the Senate are sure to follow. Though Lott has spoken to the new leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus–and appealed to them for clemency–I’m told that the CBC will formally call for his ouster as leader. House Democrats will keep up the drumbeat–and can’t wait to film the ads.
But Lott’s real problem is on the right, and in his own party. Some GOP leaders have come to his defense, among them Sen. Arlen Specter and the only black Republican in the House, J.C. Watts, who is retiring at the end of this year. Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer issued a rather tepid endorsement.
Still, if you are a conservative Republican, you have to know that you are in trouble if Rush Limbaugh is on your case, and the other day Rush branded him “stupid.” Lott was castigated by an old friend, Jack Kemp, who has spent a lifetime in politics trying to draw African-Americans into the GOP tent. The president himself weighed in Thursday, telling a Philadelphia gathering that “any suggestion that a segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive and it is wrong.”
Some Republican strategists close to the White House want Lott dumped. They are being held back primarily by the fact that there is not a candidate at the ready. Last year, Sen. Don Nickles was prepared to challenge Lott for the leadership post, but held back. He (and Bush) may be regretting that decision.
One voice not to be heard from is Thurmond’s. The irony is that he long ago distanced himself from his own past, becoming among the first Southern senators to hire black aides and working as hard for votes in the black community as he did among whites. Lott has managed to make Strom, a century old, look like the innovator in the New South.
