Word: lotte
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Dole's graceful words made it all the more jolting when Lott, who is scheduled to resume his old job as majority leader when the Senate convenes next month, took the podium and declared, "I want to say this about my state: 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...
...room, jammed with well-wishers, a handful of reporters and one of those ever present C-SPAN cameras, went silent for a moment. And so did the rest of Washington, for a few days. But Lott had set off a time bomb. During the 1948 race Lott was referring to, Thurmond had broken with the Democratic Party over President Truman's expansion of civil rights for black Americans. Thurmond ran for President as the nominee of the States' Rights Party, also known as the Dixiecrats. Its platform was built almost entirely around a pledge to uphold "the segregation...
...Lott's apparent nostalgia for the days of Jim Crow segregation was denounced as "fundamentally racist" by former Vice President Al Gore. In a terse written statement, Lott apologized to "anybody who was offended" by his "poor choice of words." But the Washington Post reported that Lott had used almost identical words in praise of Thurmond's segregationist campaign during comments in Mississippi in 1980. A slip of the lip suddenly looked like a pattern and opened a public exhumation of Lott's long record of votes and statements hostile to the civil rights movement...
...however, the incoming Senate leader had wounded not only himself but also his party's decade-long campaign to shed its reputation for thinly veiled race baiting. He soured the jubilant mood that has lifted Republicans since they recaptured control of the Senate in last month's elections--with Lott in control of its agenda. The controversy comes at a time when many Republicans had begun to believe that in George W. Bush they had found an inclusive messenger who could help them attract minority votes. And the damage among some white voters could be even greater: Lott may have...
...Lott didn't see the storm coming, it was in part because it was so slow in building. The papers did not make note of his comments until days after he had made them. But the stillness was broken by the hum of Internet "bloggers" who were posting their outrage and compiling rap sheets of Lott's earlier comments. It took a few more days before Democrats denounced Lott and demanded a censure. More worrisome, some conservative leaders who have never regarded Lott as an effective leader weighed in. Pundits like William Bennett called for Lott's ouster from...