That wacky Trent Lott

[grysar]

This isn't fresh news any more, but I'm not willing to pass it up. The Senate Majority leader to be made this comment at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party. For those who don't know, in 1948 Thurmond split with the Democrats and rand on a segregationist Dixiecrat ticket. I've always had a bit of gratitude to him for clearing out a lot of racist scum from the Democratic party, but back on topic.

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."

Just saw today that twenty years earlier he had made a similar comment as a representative.

Lott-"You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today.'

He did apologize, - "A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embraced the discarded policies of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement."

Funny that he should use the same poor choice of words after so long a time in reference to the same topic. Also amusing that he has refused to explain what he meant.

So any one care to speculate about what Lott actually meant if we accept his apology at face value?

I'm gonna go with this BS explanation.
'Just as the civil war wasn't really about slavery, the segregation issue was not actually about racist oppression but was instead about States' rights. Thurmond has been consistently right about States' rights and his later hiring of African American staffers and outreach towards African American's in his district shows that the he was never really about racism.'

Ah, spin, some obfuscation, some faulty logic, and an analogy to a premise that is wrong to begin with. Fun stuff.

Any other takers for this game of, guess what the right words would have been? Funny entries are welcome, encouraged even.

Comments

[capfox.livejournal.com]

Two choices!
"If we elected him years ago, then we wouldn't have had to deal with the ridicule from knowledgeable people in other countries about having a 100 year old guy in the top few in the line of succession for the presidency. I still get snarky emails about that."

"Had we elected this man, we wouldn't have down in the history books that the American public elected to the presidency a man with a middle initial and no middle name. Or that stupid picture with the newspaper. I can picture it now: Thurmond Defeats Dewey. I could have gotten behind that."

[grysar.livejournal.com]

I'd pay good money to see Trent Lott say either of these things.