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A MAN OF NO SUBSTANCE
Trent Lott had a bad December.
He tracked barnyard muck on the carpet and
forced the party to dean it up. Republicans chose
a throw rug to cover the smirch, though deep
cleaning was needed. They decried Lott, ousted
him, and installed Bill Frist in his place (mean
while making Lott Chairman of the powerful
Senate Rules Committee.)
Republicans benefited from the hub-bub in two
ways. First, commentators praised Lott's ouster as
an ending to the Republican "Southern strategy."
This game plan, developed by Richard Nixon, con
sisted of coded appeals to disgruntled, rural white
males and delays in affirmative action programs
and desegregation efforts. Second, the
Republicans could deny the Southern strategy
even existed. Lott's removal, they said, repre
sented Republican indignation and their
increasing efforts to attract minority voters.
Such attraction is necessary if Bush wants to
be re-elected (or re-appointed) to another four-
year term. In 2000, Dubyah lost the popular vote
to Gore by 500,000 votes and received one out of
10 black votes. According to a New York Times edi
torial, Democrats had a strong showing among
"working white women, Hispanics, and suburban
moderates," and Republicans "realized that they
had essentially maxed out on four decades of pan
dering to angry white males."
A change of strategy, though, does not mean a
change of heart, and the manipulation of race for
the benefit of one party or another remains a
foundation of American politics.
In the 19th century, Reconstruction ended
when Rutherford B. Hayes became President after
striking a deal with Southern politicians. In
exchange for Southern support in the House of
Representatives, Hayes withdrew Federal troops
from the South and left the issue of the
freedmen's civil rights to the states. Those rights
were taken away, by coercion and legislation, and
the voting statutes of the 1890 Mississippi
Constitution were imitated throughout the South.
Those statutes enacted poll taxes and literacy
requirements that disenfranchised black and poor
white voters. Finally, in 1896, the Supreme Court
ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but
equal" did not violate the 14th Amendment, and
Jim Crow became not just a Southern phenom
enon, but the rule of thumb for bigots nationwide.
It stayed that way until after World War II
when Harry Truman desegregated the armed ser
vices and initiated the President's Committee on
Civil Right* in October of 1946. The Commission's
findings were released in February, 1947, and
called to "end immediately all discrimination and
segregation based on race, color, creed or national
origin in... all branches of the Armed Services."
The Committee also called for federal laws against
lynching, employment discrimination and poll
taxes. In January of 1948, Truman ended segrega
tion in the military by executive order, which
avoided legislative resistance by Southerners.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the story
is a November, 1947, memo that Clark Clifford
sent Truman. Clifford told Truman that his stance
on desegregation would cost him votes in the
South, but those lost would be more than com
pensated for by the minority vote nationwide.
Clifford was correct, and Truman won a
squeaker of an election. However, Truman's
actions began a reaction that would sanction
racism under the rubric of "states' rights."
A recent biography of Strom Thurmond, 01'
Strom, details the events. Thurmond ran for
President on a platform devoted entirely to states'
rights, and politicians across the South began to
speak of the "sacred rights of the state."
By 1957, Southern politicians co-authored the
"Southern manifesto." The document maintained
the sovereignty of the state over the dictates of
the feds, and read in part, "We regard the decision
of the Supreme Court in the school cases as a
clear abuse of judicial power. It-climaxes a trend
in the Federal judiciary
undertaking to legis
late, in derogation of
the authority of
Congress, and to
encroach upon the
reserved rights of the
States and the people."
In essence, the
Southern manifesto
pretended that the Civil
War had never settled
the question of the
fed's authority. Even so,
the manifesto was
signed by 19 Senators
and 81 Representatives
from the South,
including all of
Georgia's Congressional
delegation.
The document con
cluded by commending
"the motives of those
States which have declared the intention to resist
forced integration by any lawful means." The com
ment is perhaps best understood as an allusion to
the growth of the Citizens Councils (grandsire of
the Council of Conservative Citizens) that worked
to oppose desegregation throughout the South,
often in conjunction with the Klan. The stage was
set for the large-scale resistance to the Civil
Rights movement throughout the next decade.
In sum, the South's leadership prioritized a
racist agenda that prepared the South for Nixon's
"Southern strategy." After the tumultuous '60s,
disgruntled Southerners saw in the Republican
party a way to regain the power they saw them
selves losing. This is the atmosphere in which
Trent Lott came of age, politically. He graduated
from the University of Mississippi School of Law in
1967, the year before Nixon's "Southern strategy"
began. After practicing law a short time, he joined
the staff of Mississippi Representative Bill Comer,
a Democrat and staunch segregationist. He ran for
Comer's seat, as a
Republican, when
Comer retired in 1972.
Lott's political
career parallels the
"Southern strategy."
Lott benefited from it
for 30 years, in the
House until 1987 and,
from 1988 on, in the
Senate. In that time,
he has not introduced
any major legislation,
and his chief contribu
tion has been as an
organizer, cheerleader,
and waterboy for his
ideological role models.
To say he's a model
of Southern bigotry is
to overestimate his
capacity. He's not a
big-picture-guy. He
swapped soul for suc
cess and became little more than a ghost in the
Republican machine. He became what the South
was looking for in one of its most difficult
periods. A man of no substance. A sub-clause in a
nasty and ongoing agenda.
Billy Claude Puckett
Billy Claude Puckett is a Holiness minister, an
ex-Peace Corps volunteer, and a car salesman in
south Georgia. He takes up serpents.
LOTT- A ghost in the Republican machine.
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FLAGPOLE.COM • JANUARY 15, 2003