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Lott fights for his political survival
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Incoming Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott faces mounting pressure after being criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike for controversial statements he made earlier this month at Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party. Senate Republicans plan to hold a conference of their members January 6 to decide whether they want Lott to serve as majority leader. Vic Fazio, a Democrat and former member of Congress from California, and Bay Buchanan, a conservative strategist and president of The American Cause, stepped into the "Crossfire" Friday with hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson to discuss the controversy surrounding Lott and what the future may hold for him. BEGALA: Bay, before you walked out, we asked our audience about the Lott press conference today and they weren't buying the apologies. What did you make of it? BUCHANAN: I think the apology was totally acceptable. I think that Senator Lott has done a fine job of explaining himself and apologizing. He recognizes a mistake that he clearly made ... and everybody agrees that it was a terrible mistake but that's yesterday now, Tucker. I think he certainly explained to the American people that was not what he intended. And that he, indeed, does not feel those things in his heart. In which case, he is certainly qualified to be the leader of the party. But that decision will be up to the Republicans. CARLSON: Mr. Fazio, is he going to hold on? FAZIO: Well, you know it really will depend on whether any one emerges from the pack in the Senate. If Don Nickles or Chuck Hagel or Bill Frist or even Mitch McConnell decide that it's time for him to go, then he's really got an issue to deal with. But where are the Bennetts and where are the Kristols today? Are they continuing to advocate his removal? The Kemp wing of the Republican Party is livid. And that's why the president went so strongly public yesterday. It's also, I'm sure, the president's effort to staunch the bleeding and to put an end to it, because I don't believe he is calling for Lott's resignation. Obviously, if he were to change his opinion, if he thought the burden on the Republican Party would be too great and he decided to make a move, I think he would find a way to upset Senator Lott's chances of staying power. BUCHANAN: You know what is unfortunate, congressman? It's not just the Democrats, as has been pointed out, there are some conservatives who have jumped on this bandwagon. And I believe they do so for their own agenda. You know I have not been a supporter of Trent Lott; I prefer Don Nickles. I'm more conservative than Trent Lott. But when you look at exactly what we have here, we have a man that clearly made a mistake. Everybody who has worked with him, everybody who is close to him and anyone who has been associated with him has clearly said that the man doesn't have a racist bone in his body. It clearly was a mistake. He made a dumb mistake, but he did not in any way suggest that it was something worse than that. And for them to kind of put it on the bandwagon -- the guy is hurt, he made a mistake, and so now let's all jump on the bandwagon and try to get him while he is down. I think it's an outrageous ... FAZIO: The problem, Bay, is there is a pattern here. There's a pattern that goes back a long way. And if you look at a record comparison between Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott, you see that Strom gravitated much more quickly to the center from his position in 1948. He voted for Martin Luther King's birthday, he voted to extend the voting rights act of 1981, and Trent Lott didn't. So as you begin to see a pattern over time, you begin to ask questions about whether this is just more of the same apology for the same mistake. BEGALA: In fact, let's take a look at the record, Bay. These are just some of the lowlights, as I would call them. Others would agree with these votes -- every one of them, I'm sure. In 1980, Trent Lott got out and endorsed Strom Thurmond's '48 candidacy in eerily similar words to those he used last week and said the country would have been better if we had followed Thurmond's candidacy and supported it. In 1981 he filed a brief with the Supreme Court [in which] he claimed racial discrimination does not always violate public policy. In 1984, he said the spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 GOP platform, the party of Lincoln. In '92 he went to a very controversial group, the Conservative Citizens Council, which some people have alleged to be white supremacists, and told them they stand for the right principles. In 1998, he told a magazine, "Sometimes I feel closer to Jefferson Davis than any other man in America." And just last week [he] again said that we would be better off, we wouldn't have had all these problems, if we had had a segregationist president instead of Harry Truman. Now that is a pattern. That is a record. BUCHANAN: You know, as I said before, in no way did he intend the remark last week. It was a comment directly to an individual who was having his 100th birthday ... They run into somebody who ran for president, and it's a comment you make. It wasn't intended to be a national comment. He's made it many times before. But the issue here is something both the congressman and you were pointing out, [which is] if he's done things in the past. He has been the majority leader in the past, and I didn't hear you saying, "My golly, why is the man the leader of this party, when all of these things have taken place?" The man is not racist. None of those things that he did suggest he is. And what I suggest is happening here is that the Democrats, who got [whipped] badly by this president and his party a month ago, are out there, they're angry, they see a little blood in the water, they're circling, and they're going to use the only thing they have that works anymore, they feel, and I believe that no longer works, and that's the race card. Because you have no message whatsoever [you say,] "Let's get the race card out and go immediately after ..." CARLSON: I want to respond to this. I want to throw out -- just to put this whole debate in some perspective -- the text of a letter that Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the longest serving Democrat in the United States Senate, wrote some years ago about integrating the military: "I shall never submit to fight beneath that banner with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times and see old glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, then to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds." Now, it's hard to imagine anything uglier than that. That was some time ago, and he's apologized for it profusely. And that's the point. Just as Mr. Lott apologized for comments nowhere near that ugly. Democrats have taken Mr. Byrd at his word, why not take Mr. Lott at his? FAZIO: Well, you know, I don't think it's a question of taking somebody at their word. I think it's really a question of looking at where the modern Republican Party has come from. If you look at who has been really leading the party since the early '90s: Georgia, Texas, at best, border states, like Missouri and Oklahoma. Men who have been elected to Congress with at least an element of their constituency not yet settled on the civil rights movement. I think you saw in Georgia, for example, in this election, an increase in white male turnout of 9 percent over the last election. Many people think it had a lot to do with the fight over the Confederate battle flag in that state -- where the governor, with the business community pushing him, attempted to mollify and diffuse this issue. CARLSON: Wait, Mr. Fazio. It's still legal -- just for the record -- for white men to come out and vote. I don't know if you know that. FAZIO: Absolutely. I'm not pointing out that it is illegal. CARLSON: But you are implying that they're racist is what you're doing. FAZIO: No, Tucker, I'm saying they went because this is still an issue that stimulates them. This is still an issue that brings them out of the woodwork. These were not people who had voted consistently. They were responding to a stimulus. We saw this week Clarence Thomas sitting on the Supreme Court questioning in the cross burning case in Virginia whether or not this was a symbol of free speech or a symbol of oppression and violence and degradation. The southern political scene is still not yet finished with all of the follow-on to the Civil War. These are still issues that galvanize voters, left and right. And we need to bring an end to it.
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