The Strange Case of the Racist Senate Majority Leader Revisited

or

The Urge to Purge

In a move that was virtually no surprise to anyone, Trent Lott resigned his leadership position in the Senate last Friday.

I can almost hear him saying to himself, "but I'm not a racist; I like black people just fine," which makes sense given that most white people think that it's an absolutely awful thing to be thought of as a racist. In fact, over the weekend, Lott implied that such speculation might be true: he blamed his ouster on his political "enemies," whoever they are, but not on some Republican urge to purge racist elements of the party in order to clear the way for recruiting of people of color. There may be some truth to his accusations.

(C'mon, like the Republicans are really trying to fight racism!)

When the news of Lott's resignation broke, I was kind of surprised to see that Bill Frist was the odds on favorite to become the Senate leader. Bill who? I thought that Don Nickels had been positioning himself for a week to move into Lott's position. Frist, the pundits all say, is a major Bush ally. Ah-ha. I asked a Republican friend what she thought was going on: Lott was seen by the Bush faction as being somewhat difficult to work with and too independent. (Within hours of my hearing about this political hardball angle, the corporate pundits were all over it.)

The President and his Rasputins know an opportunity when they see it. It now seems that Bush very cynically used Lott's political weakness to install what could very well turn out to be a White House puppet as Senate majority leader (while also trying to appear to be fighting racism at the same time). This has got to be true. Firstly, this was clearly a coup that was fueled by certain Republicans (complete with strategic White House leaks says Lott); the Democrats (you know, the pro-civil rights party...) were hardly involved except for members of the politically weak Congressional Black Caucus in the House and a few white liberal legislators here and there. Secondly, Bush doesn't really seem to have a problem with Republican racism and the southern strategy. After all, he refused to condemn Bob Jones University for its racist policies and he called the Confederate state flag issue a "states' rights" issue--"states' rights" is widely understood at this point to be one of those southern strategy code words that appeal to southern white racist voters. Thirdly, the one thing that gets under the skin of the priests of the Bush cult is disobedience. Lott, it seems, just wasn’t being a good boy.

You know, I think I will buy that some Republicans were outraged by Lott's pro-segregationist remarks, but it now seems clear that the entire scandal was far more about Bush consolidating his power in a Stalinesque way than it was about the Republicans purging their party of racism. There was a purge, all right, a purge of one of Bush's more powerful political opponents, Trent Lott. I haven't seen such political opportunism since...since...well...well, since Bush declared war on the world and American civil rights shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The more I think about this, the more my stomach hurts. This is pretty disgusting.

It will, of course, be business as usual for the Republicans on the issue of racism. There will be more tokens. More gospel choirs. More words of inclusion and "compassionate conservatism." More code words like "law and order" and "crime" and “drugs" and "welfare queen." More winks and nods to southern racist groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens. More defending of the Confederate battle flag. The Republicans really had an opportunity to do the right thing and potentially outflank the do-nothing Democrats on the issue of race, to once again truly be the party of Abraham Lincoln. But no.

They are, after all, Republicans, aren't they? It seems that they must be true to their nature. That is to say, evil.

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ADDENDUM:

Check out Attorney General John Ashcroft's racist associations. He's no better than Trent Lott, but he is in the Cult of Bush. The Nation website is a good place to start (www.thenation.com).

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