Big Media, Little Media
Goliaths are days behind the Davids on LottGate
by Tamara Baker

Dec. 7, 2002 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (APJP) -- Let's make at least one thing perfectly clear: despite Don Nickles' yammerings to the contrary, Trent Lott's career isn't toast because he's "more liberal" than George W. Bush.

Remember, Lott's the guy who wanted to immediately push restrictive new anti-choice legislation last month -- even before the dust had settled from the elections. This frightened the hell out of Karl Rove because it immediately and publicly destroyed the election-year "compassionate" varnish with which Rove has been attempting to coat former Texas governor Bush in particular and the GOP in general.

But, as we soon would be reminded at Strom Thurmond's birthday party -- and why, oh why, could that man not have been born on, say, October 29, 1902? -- Lott has a tendency to forget that he should be speaking in the "compassionate conservative" code the Republican Party uses to obscure their actual agenda. Combine this with a stubborn insistence on Senatorial power and privilege -- far too much so for the tastes of a Rove-Cheney-Card troika that demands slavish obedience at all times -- and one need not be, say, Stephen Hawking to conclude that Lott was doomed.

Doomed though he is, Lott's not going down without a fight.

His minions have made quite, quite sure that Nickles' own racist connections are put into media play. Not only does this nicely torpedo Nickles' own bid to replace Lott, it also makes it that much harder for the Bushistas to pretend that Lott and Thurmond are just a few racist aberrations in the so-called Party of Lincoln.

Furthermore, Lott has made it clear that he would rather resign from the Senate rather than lose his Senate Majority Leader position -- and, since his state, Mississippi, has a Democrat in the Governor's Mansion, a Democrat would be appointed to take his place should Lott resign.

Rumor has it that should Lott leave the Senate altogether, the appointee will be Mike Espy -- who was Clinton's first Secretary of Agriculture, and a damned good one, until Republicans railroaded him out of office on bogus pretexts. Given that Espy is black, this would be uncommonly fitting. This would also put the Democrats a mere Linc Chafee away from retaining control of the Senate.

So the Bushies may well wind up leaving Lott in place, their current tough talk notwithstanding.

One just has to ask: how did this come about? How did the GOP, riding so high two weeks ago, suddenly come so close to losing everything they won last month?

I'll tell you how.

It was you. You, dear reader, did it.

You did it when you got together on various Internet fora to express your outrage at Lott's endorsement of Thurmond's 1948 views.

You did it when you saw the articles posted here and on sites like Atrios' weblog -- Atrios is the one who found the 1948 Mississippi segregationist sample ballot -- and sent the information contained therein to the mainstream papers and broadcast entities.

You were the one who joined the criticism coming from the Congressional Black Caucus -- never letting up until Al Gore himself stepped forward to do what no other white Democrat of his stature had done: soundly condemn Lott's remarks.

And when the other Democrats rushed in to follow Gore, you were there, goading them on, goading them into doing the right thing.

You, dear reader. It was you. Because you care.

Keep reading, keep caring, and keep fighting!