Nonetheless, the conservative response to Lott’s comments was instinctive and scathing. The Wall Street Journal editorial page understood the importance of the story quicker than the rest of the national media. Among Republican politicos, the response was just as telling. They were bewildered.
Most Republicans see themselves walking in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, Theodore Roosevelt or Thomas Jefferson. Whom does Lott follow? “Sometimes I feel closer to Jefferson Davis than any other man in America,” he once said. He seems to believe that the era of intrusive liberal government and cultural decay began because the wrong side won the Civil War or “the war of aggression,” as Lott calls it. He seems to regard Abraham Lincoln as the precursor to George McGovern.
These are not normal Republican ideas. These are ideas of a person so out of touch with 21st-century America that he doesn’t deserve to be holding a leadership job for a major political party.
The problem for Lott is that he is living in 1862 or, at the latest, 1948. The problem for the Democrats is that many of them are still living around 1963. They seized upon Lott’s comments as a chance to replay the whole Bull Connor/“Mississippi Burning” story line. And if you can count on Republicans to be clumsy on racial matters, you can count on Democrats to go over the top. By Friday, some Democrats and liberal commentators were calling the entire Republican Party racist, and implying that the entire South is racist. (Then they wonder why they have trouble winning national elections and holding onto Senate and gubernatorial seats in states like Georgia.)
The fact is, this is 2002. There are still racial matters to discuss and argue about. But they have little to do with whatever Strom Thurmond was screeching about in 1948. Today’s dilemmas are more complex. Trent Lott, whose serial apologies last week were little more than a series of stale and witless cliches, doesn’t seem to have thought seriously about any of this.
