The goals for this country are peace
in the world. And the goals for
this country are a compassionate American for every single
citizen.That
compassion is found in the hearts and souls of the American
citizens.
--President George
W. Bush, Dec. 19, 2002
Here at Unsolicited Opinions,
Inc., we can think of no better way to
send Seasons Greetings to our readers than to
pass on the bewildering words
of our commander-in-chief. As Mark Crispin Miller
has noted in his book
The Bush Dyslexicon, President Junior is never
more inarticulate than when
he's faking empathy. Intent upon making war with
Iraq, Bush can barely utter
a conventional Christmas peace message without
swallowing his tongue.
Elsewhere, the Trent
Lott episode had many Republicans faking shock and
horror at suddenly unfashionable racial sentiments.
Writing in the Washington
Times, Little Rock's own Wesley Pruden offered
a unique alibi. "Mr. Lott said
an exceedingly foolish and thoughtless thing"
he wrote "perhaps because he was
rattled by the roguish pass that Strom Thurmond
had just made at his wife."
As Dave Barry says, we
are not making this up. A 100 year-old man
supposedly hits on the lovely Mrs. Lott
and the Senator's response is to wax
nostalgic about "colored" drinking fountains
and "separate but equal" schools?
Wouldn't a real Southern Gentleman have challenged
Thurmond to a duel?
Pruden also expressed
consternation that the White House caved to what
he characterized as Democratic race-baiters and
the New York Times and
Washington Post. "Nothing," he wrote "makes these
worthies feel better
or braver than boxing with ghosts. Trent Lott,
everybody's friend only a
fortnight ago, makes a particularly tempting
target because he's not only a
Southerner, but a Mississippian."
Lott too picked up on
the theme. "When you're from Mississippi and
you're a conservative and you're a Christian,"
he told the Associated Press
"there are a lot of people don't like that."
Quite illogically, given
his insistence that "nobody deals in racial politics
in the Southany longer," Pruden warned that "if
the Gooey Old Party is actually
sincere in wanting to reach out and touch someone
black, it should not only
jettison the Southern strategy but perhaps jettison
the South as well, and
rebuild its fortunes in the Midwest and New England,
where it first flourished.
(Good luck.) The South could be left to drift
back to its natural home in the
Democratic Party."
Pruden warned that recent
victories by Democrats Mark Pryor in Arkansas
and Mary Landrieu in Louisiana could be the wave
of the future. The problem
is that these victories preceeded the Lott episode.
And that, we argued here
last week, showed smarter and more conscientious
Republicans the handwriting
on the wall.
Did certain Yankees whose
main contact with black people is watching
NBA games on TV indulge in an anachronistic orgy
of moral superiority?
You bet. But it wasn't liberal Democrats who
brought Lott down, it was
conservatives. Absent White House leaks, the
anti-Lott media frenzy wouldn't
have lasted three days. "Republicans may once
have used race to polarize the
electorate, especially in the South," the Wall
Street Journal editorial page
said Thursday. "But that strategy long ago stopped
being useful." On Friday,
Lott resigned.
No wonder Lott
feels betrayed.Conservative pundits who never said boo
when the first President Bush benefited from
the notorious Willie Horton ad
back in 1988, nor when Junior himself beat a
path to Bob Jones University,
nor when he shamefully used a telephone whisper
campaign to call attention
to Sen. John McCain's "black child" (an adopted
daughter from Bangladesh)
during the 2000 South Carolina primary, nor even
last month when the GOP
made the Rebel flag a big issue in Georgia, suddenly
waxed eloquent about
Lott's wickedness.
What's going on? Count
the electoral votes. There's no state Bush lost
in 2000 he'd be sure of winning tomorrow. And
every single one is outside
the old Confederacy. "We have just about maxed
out with white men," a
GOP strategist told the Washington Post. "When
you look into the future,
all you see is smaller numbers and more and more
Hispanics. Look at Texas.
Unless we do something, in a decade or so it's
going to go the way of
California...We have to adapt to survive."
Meanwhile, the job of
the Rush Limbaughs of this world is to confuse
dumb white bigots by blaming Jesse Jackson, Bill
Clinton and Al Gore.
Limbaugh spent last week smearing the memory
of Albert Gore, Sr., one of
a handful of Southern politicians who resisted
racist demagoguery when it
was physically dangerous. Also the late Sen.
J. William Fulbright.
If Fulbright's civil rights record was flawed,
he was certainly no "rabid
segregationist." He supported Truman against
the Dixiecrats in 1948, for
example. Nor has Clinton ever failed to make
his disagreement with his
mentor on those issues absolutely clear.