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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (24032)	11/17/2006 6:35:10 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Why Trent Lott? Casting Lott for the wrong position. By Jonah Goldberg National Review Online Who says the Republicans are the Stupid party? Huge numbers of voters told exit pollsters that they were disgusted with the nigh-upon Roman excesses of the GOP; the self-dealing, the pork-barrel spending, the aloofness — it was all just too much. Meanwhile, strategists warned that the Republican party was becoming too white, too male and too exclusively Southern. Ken Mehlman, the outgoing head of the Republican National Committee, declared just days after the GOP’s recent thumpin’, “We rely too much on white guys for our vote.” So what did the GOP senators do when they needed to pick their No. 2 man in the Senate? They shouted, “This is a job for Trent Lott!” Recall, if you will, that Lott, the Mississippi Republican, was Senate majority leader in 2002 until he proclaimed that America would be better off if only Strom Thurmond — the Dixiecrat segregationist candidate in 1948 — had been elected president. The gale-force winds of the subsequent political maelstrom were not only enough to blow Lott from his perch as majority leader, but some witnesses actually swear they saw his hair move. Now, I don’t know if Lott’s a racist, and I certainly don’t believe his 2002 comments were intentionally bigoted. Lott’s gaffe reflected something else about the man and the culture he represents. He not only thinks the Senate is a country club, he thinks members have an unlimited right to rifle the club’s supply room (a.k.a. the Treasury) in the name of their constituents. A Lott colleague once said, “After pork, Trent’s default position is conservative, but he likes to compromise.” The inscription on his Profiles in Courage plaque almost writes itself. Nobody disputes that Lott could be a great minority whip. He was elected precisely because he has the skills a minority whip needs: an intimate knowledge of the institution, and the ability to shake down colleagues for votes. Lott is detail-oriented, collegial with an Old World gentility — as well as a certain sexual confidence befitting a former cheerleader at Ole Miss. It also should be remembered that Lott’s downfall was essentially a coup orchestrated in part by a White House that didn’t think Lott’s Confederate nostalgia jibed well with “compassionate conservatism.” Retrieving Lott from his Mississippi Elba may be the Senate’s way of telling the White House, “You won’t have the Senate GOP to kick around anymore.” So let us concede that he will be the consummate inside man in the Senate. Let’s even concede that the paroxysm of political correctness that cost Lott his leadership post in the first place was overdone. The question remains: What are those senators smoking? Yes, yes, Lott’s defenders are also right to say that most normal Americans don’t know who the whip is — or even that such a position exists. That’s not the point. The job is unknown; Lott isn’t. There are all sorts of obscure jobs out there, and not just in politics. But if you put famous people in them, they stop being obscure. If O.J. Simpson became recording secretary of the American Horticultural Society, you could hardly defuse the negative press by saying, “It’s a really inside job.” The boys and girls in the clubhouse seem to think that what happened to Lott was unfair. “He apologized, and he paid a serious price for it,” Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe said. Maybe so. But so what? It’s not about him. Or at least it shouldn’t be. Lott is a bad face for the Republican party. Period. Full stop. If that’s unfair to Trent, boo hoo for Trent. Somebody buy him an ice-cream cone. Besides, the idea that fairness to Lott should supersede what’s good for the Republican party is of a piece with precisely the sort of back-scratching, log-rolling mentality that got the GOP in trouble in the first place. It bespeaks a mind-set that says, “Well, Senator so-and-so voted for my pet project, so in fairness to him, I’ll vote for his.” Nowhere does this calculation figure in the good of the country. Lott’s rehab is a nice story — for Lott. But it’s hard to see how it will have a happy ending for the rest of us. (C) 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc. article.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (24032)	11/17/2006 6:58:27 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Stupid once more, Part Two Power Line Yesterday I argued that certain highly criticized Republican personnel decisions (particularly those involving Trent Lott and Mel Martinez), though not necessarily correct, are not unreasonable and do not signify that the party has become stupid. Hugh Hewitt not only agrees but goes further, stating that "both [Martinez and Lott] have the potential to be huge wins for the GOP, especially given Lott's command of Senate procedure." However, another very perceptive conservative, Jim Geraghty, strongly disagrees. In the case of Martinez, he accuses me of "putting words in people's mouths." Specifically, he thinks I said that critics of the Martinez decision believe it's unreasonable to have an Hispanic Senator as a public face of the party. Jim didn't read what I wrote carefully enough. My point with respect to the Martinez critics was not that they think appointing a Hispanic is unreasonable, but that, in attacking the appointment, they haven't acknowledged the reasonableness (i.e. the upside) of having a Hispanic in that position. Martinez's national origin is, I think Jim agrees, at least one of the reasons why he got the job. Therefore, it ought to be engaged. One can criticize on principle making a decision for that reason; one can point to the pragmatic downside -- you may not get one of the party's best substantive spokespersons. But before one concludes that the decision is terrible, one should at least acknowledge the potential advantages of having Martinez in the job, and show either that you could get the same advantage with a different Hispanic or that any advantage is clearly outweighed by the other concerns. Jim does neither. The same with the Lott decision. Jim thinks that Lott's old comment about Thurmond will cost Republicans dearly over the next two years. I don't. To my knowledge, the past (or even present) utterances of a minority whip have never appreciably set back a political party. If the party in power this year couldn't get mileage out of the comments of the better known John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi, I don't see how the new party in power will get mileage out of stale comments by Lott. Jim points to the impact of "macaca." That comment hurt the candidate who made it in his particular race. That doesn't mean that Lott's old remark will hurt other candidates. But even I'm wrong about this, or (more plausibly) it turns out that Lott's fondness for pork is a substantial negative, one should still weigh the rationale for (and the upside of) selecting Lott -- his apparent back room skill. Jim doesn't do this. My broader point was that bloggers should pause before concluding that previously successful politicians and operatives have become stupid. Jim doesn't agree with this either: <<< [W]hen you lose about 30 House seats and six Senate seats, people start wondering how smart you really are. If the Senate Caucus had a better record in recent years, and Rove hadn't failed to pull a rabbit out of a hat this year, conservative bloggers would have a lot more faith in their judgment. >>> But failure to pull a rabbit out a hat isn't grounds for major disparagement. And Jim doesn't show that the thumpin' was the fault of the Senators who voted for Lott, who range from Snowe to McCain to Thune. Most people attribute it to the six-year itch, or the war in Iraq, or corruption on the part of certain members, none of which has much to do with the judgment of incumbent Republican Senators. On my bookshelf, I see Jim's book, Voting To Kill: How 9/11 Launched the Era of Republican Leadership. It argues, in the words of the publisher, that because Americans will continue to trust the GOP as the only party committed to taking the fight against terrorism to the enemy, "American voters will cast their ballots for the Republicans in 2006 and 2008." It didn't work out that way this year, but this doesn't mean that Jim has gone from hero (brilliant critic of John Kerry and his campaign) to zero. It just means that there are ups and downs in politics and that one can't always foresee, much less prevent, them. Politics, in sum, is an uncertain business, and it would be good if conservative bloggers kept this in mind. powerlineblog.com powerlineblog.com tks.nationalreview.com amazon.com