The Republican Re-Embrace of Trent Lott

Lott: 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, either.

Video here.

After losing his leadership post in the Senate in disgrace only four years ago for publicly endorsing Sen. Strom Thurmond's racist Dixiecrat platform, Senator Lott is again a member of the Senate Republican leadership, winning the Minority Whip post by one vote.

As Atrios put it:

Well, after being demoted from the #1 Republican spot all the way down to the #4 Republican spot, Trent Lott has triumphantly clawed his way back to the #2 spot.

Scott Lemieux of Lawyers, Guns & Money has posted the Dixiecrats' platform from 1948. Here are the three most odious planks:

4. We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one's associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to learn one's living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.

5. We oppose and condemn the action of the Democratic Convention in sponsoring a civil rights program calling for the elimination of segregation, social equality by Federal fiat, regulations of private employment practices, voting, and local law enforcement.

6. We affirm that the effective enforcement of such a program would be utterly destructive of the social, economic and political life of the Southern people, and of other localities in which there may be differences in race, creed or national origin in appreciable numbers.

Scott makes the obvious point that there's little question that the "these problems over all these years" referenced by Lott were Brown v. Board and the Civil and Voting Rights Acts. But Lott says he was just trying to make an old man feel good at a party. Whatever.