> In a message dated 12/23/02 12:26:50 PM Pacific Standard Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > So what has happened for the conservative right that Bush let him [Lott] > fall?
The main reason is that this sort of open racism alienates swing voters and if Lott stayed, he'd be a button ready to push for the next to years. And the Dems have no other button so you can be sure they'd push it. The whole point of the Southern Strategy is to say these things covertly, and on that score Lott was clearly a huge failure after years of success. Yes it was because enemies dragged him down, but that counts too. He's now like a spy with busted cover. And attracting swing voters in swing states is strategically more important than playing to the base in the South. Real racists there have no place else to go. It's the basically the same reasoning on which Clinton abandoned Lani Guineer. (Lott was more of a fixture, yes. But unlike Guineer, he was never someone the White House chose and they were happy to see him go. They feel they've traded up. This doesn't feel like a sacrifice to them at all.) The more amusing (in a black humor sense, if you can excuse the term) reason is this: the really conservative guys in the administration, like Ashcroft and Olsen, want very much to continue to pander to their constituency by, for example, entering a strong amicus brief in the big anti-affirmative action case currently before the Supreme Court. And Lott would make it impossible for them to do that sort of thing. Most of the far right in Congress soon became convined this was right. In short, while the idealists in the party thought Lott had to go so they could attract blacks, the reason the true believers agreed was because they thought it was the only way they could safely get back to sending coded racist signals. Michael
