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The Mills of Fate

By Gordon Francis Corbett

    Violating "Party discipline" and "political correctness" has cost Senator Chester Trent Lott his post as Senate Majority Leader.  Lott had begun his career as a conservative;  but, to promote himself, he became what reporters call a "moderate."  "Moderate" is a euphemism for "Republican liberal," and "liberal" means "collectivist."

    Lott's stratagem succeeded, and he became Senate Majority Leader in 1996.  Some time later, Mr. Paul Weyrich, speaking on the lamentably now-defunct National Empowerment Television network, read him out of the conservative movement for forsaking its values and goals.  I praised Mr. Weyrich's words, because I had already reached similar conclusions.

    Anyway, at a party held to celebrate James Strom Thurmond's one hundredth birthday and his forty-eight years in the Senate, Lott repeated what he had told him at a rally for Reagan in 1980:  that he was glad that Thurmond had run for president in 1948, that his positions were right, and that if we had elected him, we would not have had the problems we have had since.

    I doubt that Lott intended to endorse, per se, Thurmond's 1948 stand in favor of segregation.  As did most Southern Constitutionalists, Thurmond had based his position on the Constitution's Tenth Amendment, which Lott himself supported while he was pushing conservatism.  Add Thurmond's Tenth-Amendment-based opposition to burgeoning Federal regulation, his opposition to Communism at home and abroad, and his general support of free enterprise, and you have most of the reasons that probably induced Lott's comments.

    These three things probably inspire the attacks on Lott.

    First, Thurmond's 1948 "States' Rights Democratic Party" campaign rebelled against the Democratic Party's establishment, and against its titular head, President Harry Truman.  So, by endorsing Thurmond's 1948 campaign, Lott recognized the right to defy party establishments.  By extension, therefore, Lott implicitly sanctioned the flouting of his own Republican masters.

    Masters punish defiance.  In 1964's Republican nominating convention, rebellious Republican delegates determined to reverse the New Deal, and its successors nominated conservative Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, but they did so over liberal New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller's strident and fierce opposition.

    For practical purposes, Rockefeller owned the Republican party, and he bitterly resented Goldwater's insurrection.  After the convention, Rockefeller summoned Goldwater to a convention at Hershey, Pennsylvania.  Rockefeller laid down the law, ordering Goldwater to stop advocating his conservative goals and to campaign henceforth only as a Republican.

    If Goldwater had defied Rockefeller, his campaign would rightly have been compared with Thurmond's, because, like Thurmond's, it would have been prosecuted in open defiance of his party's establishment.

    Goldwater's campaign, and Lott's endorsement of "'Thurmond '48," may have suggested to a potential conservative rebel that he could revolt and succeed.  To dissuade him, the Establishment needed to post a warning.  Result:  Lott was fired.

    Second, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal had built governmental power wonderfully.  His successor, Harry Truman, continued backing the New Deal.  Thurmond was calling the American people's attention to the fact that, in his opinion, the New Deal was un-Constitutional and wrong.  (Roosevelt believed that it was un-Constitutional and right, supposedly because the people needed more governmental help than the Constitution would allow.  He further believed that the Constitution should not be allowed to stop the government from providing that aid, because it, in his opinion, was an obsolete "horse and buggy document.")

    The liberal Republican Establishment has always agreed essentially with the New Deal, but they want to build governmental power at home on their terms and for their interests.  Abroad, as do the Democrats, they want to continue building alliances and regional supernational governments as stepping-stones toward "One World."  In praising Thurmond's 1948 positions pushing small government and national independence, Lott committed a "no-no."  Result:  Lott was fired.

    Third, Thurmond did want States to be able to segregate their residents racially.  Whether he did so out of devotion to the Constitution and to its Tenth Amendment, or whether, as has been alleged about other men, he was using the Tenth Amendment to maintain a racist Southern establishment, I do not know.  Lott's remarks did not except Thurmond's advocacy of segregation, so he stands guilty of having endorsed it.  That fact angers many potentially Republican black voters.  Result:  Lott was fired.

    In a deeper sense, one or both of two theories may explain why Lott praised Thurmond as he did.

    The first comes from gun-owners' rights activist Neal Knox of http://www.nealknox.com .  Mr. Knox asserts that Lott panders to his audiences much more than most politicians do, and cites, as an example, Lott's remarks at the N.R.A.'s 1998 Annual Meeting.

    Plug in this theory to the known facts.  Lott knows that his audience loves Thurmond.  To gratify them, he repeated his 1980 statement praising Thurmond's 1948 campaign.

    The other theory says that when Mississippi first elected Lott to the Federal House in 1972, he really was a Constitutionalist;  but, when he discovered that apostasy could give him power, he quit the conservative Republicans for the Rockefeller Republicans.  According to this theory, Lott repeated his 1980 statement because, despite his defection, he still believed in the rightness of Thurmond's 1948 candidacy, and let his tongue outrun his brain.

     If either or both of these guesses is or are true, it would be sweet irony and poetic justice that a moment's tribute to an ancient standard-bearer of his former philosophy should have wrecked the career of Constitutionalist apostate Chester Trent Lott.  It may be true, after all, that the mills of Fate grind slowly and inexorably those who desert principle for power.
 

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