Talking about racism does not make you racist; advocating racism does.
I think this is probably the best explanation of the difference between Reid and Lott. It’s amazing how many different chatters are being led around by the nose on this one.
TPM Reader PH adds some more thoughts …
Whenever one of their side is brought down by corruption or racism, they have to then spend the next three decades looking for superficially similar circumstances that might allow them to take their revenge.
At root the problem is that for the GOP, politics simply do not matter, it is all about their side vs. the opposition. Having no principles themselves, they can’t imagine that principles might drive the decisions of anyone else. So they see the removal of Lott as nothing more than the Democrats managing to astutely exploit an unfortunate remark. They simply can’t get the idea that anyone might have been genuinely offended by Lott’s racist views.
A lot of the media shares the same blindness. They could not understand why the Clinton impeachment failed, because like the GOP they could not see the difference between lying about a blow job in a trumped up court case bore no relation to Nixon’s crimes. There are
days on which I feel sympathy for the economic circumstances that the Web has created for the establishment media, and then there are days when I look at the lousy job they did and my sympathy evaporates.
I don’t think I agree that Republicans lack any principles. I do think he’s right on the mark though in really never understanding what happened with Lott. To many of them, it really was just a matter of a clumsy remark that ended his career. The idea that people were not comfortable with having a crypto-racist who maintained active ties to white supremacist groups as the senate majority leader just didn’t compute.
