Originally Posted by
Atypical
The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru, and Power Line's Paul Mirengoff are among the conservatives to recently reject comparisons trumpeted by other right-wing media figures of Sen. Harry Reid's controversial comments about President Obama to former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's past comments in support of Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential campaign. Hayes, Ponnuru, and Mirengoff join several civil rights leaders and other media figures in rejecting that comparison.
Some conservatives reject comparison of Reid's comments to Lott's
2008: Reid reportedly said that he "believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate" like Obama who is "a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect.' " In their book on the 2008 election, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin reported that Reid was enthusiastic about then-Sen. Obama's potential candidacy to challenge then-Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Heilemann and Halperin reported that Reid's "encouragement of Obama was unequivocal. He was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,' as he later put it privately." From Heilemann's and Halperin's Game Change:
Years later, Reid would claim that he was steadfastly neutral in the 2008 race; that he never chose sides between Barack and Hillary; that all he did was tell Obama that he "could be president," that "the stars could align for him." But at the time, in truth, his encouragement of Obama was unequivocal. He was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a "light-skinned" African American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one," as he later put it privately.
Reid was convinced, in fact, that Obama's race would help him more than it hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination. (pages 35-36)
2002: Lott declared that the U.S. "wouldn't have had all these problems" if Thurmond's segregationist presidency campaign had been successful. In 2002, then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) reportedly said of Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign -- which Thurmond conducted on a segregationist platform: "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 of followed our lead we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." Lott resigned his leadership in 2002 following the comment, but Republicans elected him as Senate minority whip in 2006.
Many conservatives in the media decried a "double standard" because Democrats criticized Lott. As Media Matters for America edition of NPR's Fresh Air, senior news analyst Cokie Roberts said, despite "Republicans comparing [Reid's comments] to remarks that then-Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott made," the comments were "very different" because Lott's comments were "made about how the world might have been better if Strom Thurmond, a segregationist at the time, had been elected president."
NY Times quoted Harvard Law professor Guinier saying comments are "not in the least bit comparable." In a January 11 article, The New York Times quoted Lani Guinier, "the Harvard Law School professor whose nomination as assistant attorney general for civil rights in 1993 was pummeled by conservative groups and eventually withdrawn by President Bill Clinton," as saying the comments are "not in the least bit comparable."
From the article:
Mr. Lott's remarks, Ms. Guinier said, seemed to be expressing nostalgia for the segregationist platform of Mr. Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign, while Mr. Reid comments seemed to be addressing "an unfortunate truth about the present." That truth, she said, is that Mr. Obama would have had a more difficult time getting elected if his skin were darker and if he spoke in a dialect more identifiable as "black.
NAACP's Shelton: "Lott was actually supporting and embracing the agenda of Strom Thurmond, which was a segregation agenda." On the January 11 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, NAACP Washington bureau director Hilary Shelton said Lott's and Reid's comments are not the same because "Lott was actually supporting and embracing the agenda of Strom Thurmond, which was a segregationist agenda as he ran for president as a Dixiecrat. For him to hold those up and say, 'I wish I'd been able to support him, if he had become president our country will be a better place on a race relations issue,' raises some major concerns. Harry Reid, on the other hand, is someone that has fought for racial inclusion. He's fought for fairness, and he's fought for democracy for all Americans, regardless of race, gender, or ethnicity -- to the point he's even put his political career on the line to take some very courageous positions."