Trent Lott's Comeback

[Mempho]

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But, I've read that President Bush and Karl Rove really manipulated the situation behind the scenese

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FYP

I'm pretty sure Inside-the-Beltway buzz was that the 2002 supplanting of Lott with Frist was a Rove-engineered coup. Having said that, Rove didn't put Lott's foot in his mouth.

And I think it's pretty darn clear what Lott meant at Strom Thurmond's birthday. Certainly, I can't be inside Lott's head, but what I do know is that the administration and other GOP leaders saw Lott as a political liability circa 2002, for the reason that his comments weren't all that veiled, nor subtle. To claim that Jesse Jackson "spun" Lott's words totally ignores the fact that even President Bush conceded the obvious:

"Any suggestion that the segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive, and it is wrong. Recent comments by Senator Lott do not reflect the spirit of our country. He has apologized and rightly so. Every day that our nation was segregated was a day our nation was unfaithful to our founding ideals." - President Bush, December 2002

Frankly, to the GOP's credit, they've tried really hard to shed the image Lott/Tancredo/et al have projected, hence why Rove and other forward-thinkers in the party have no use for these guys.

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Thank you. It was Bush/Rove that drove Lott out but it was because Lott was not on board for the Bush agenda. He wanted an agenda that was for the average American no different from classical liberals. He just had different theories on how to get it done. He is the second most libertarian member of Congress according to the RLC. Thurmond had a black girlfriend at the time those comments were made...it was hardly racist. I'm originally from Mississippi, too, and it's extremely unfair that people just wait to jump on you all the time for being racist. It's an easy sell for people to make though. I'm sick of it...I've never been a racist at all. I think Lott's comments could've been taken in a number of ways but Lott is for a smaller federal government and I don't think it's fair to say that those comments were racist.