WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE. . .

For several days now, I’ve been searching for a conservative to come to the defense of incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. I haven’t found one. In fact, I constitute one of his biggest defenders simply because I don’t think he should be dumped from the GOP leadership because he’s allegedly racist. I think he should be dumped because he’s politically stupid. . . .

One has only two choices here: Either, you take Lott at his word or you don’t. If you don’t believe him, then, well, he’s a racist and a foolish one for being so obvious about it. But if you take him at his word, that he made a mistake, that’s even worse. I mean, he’s been smeared with the racist label enough times to have learned his lesson, especially considering the fact he’s supposed to lead the Republican Party.

Regardless, Trent Lott only does two things well, freeze-dry his hair and say stupid things. He mishandled impeachment, mishandled the 1998 elections, mishandled power-sharing with the Democrats after the 2000 election and mishandled Jim Jeffords straight into the Democratic Party.

One reason so many conservatives are denouncing Lott is that he’s never given conservatives much reason to trust him or care about him. He’s a deal-cutter who seems to stand for nothing except massive amounts of pork to his home state and, occasionally, sticking up for Jim Crow.

Ouch.

DAVE WEIGEL LISTS HIS CANDIDATES for Trent Lott’s replacement as majority leader.

I’m not sure that Trent Lott can really be “replaced,” though. Just succeeded.

UPDATE: Rob Smith is ready to be rid of Lott. Meanwhile, Drudge is reporting:

After a fiery speech by Strom Thurmond at a Mississippi campaign rally in November 1980, Lott, then a congressman, told a crowd: ‘You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today’… MORE… Quotation appeared in an account of the rally on Nov. 3, 1980, in Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss…

I think this story is just taking off. And, as a look at Smith’s bio indicates, if you’ve lost him, you’ve lost the South. And Lott’s lost him, big time. Meanwhile, here’s a cartoon by John Cole in the Durham Herald-Sun, and here’s a blog entry by Cole comparing Lott’s “apology” to the non-apology from Gerhard Schroeder’s Justice Minister Herta Däubler-Gmelin, who compared Bush to Hitler.

And we all know what happened to Herta, don’t we?

UPDATE: Here’s a New York Times story expanding on the Drudge quote above.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The two John Coles items are from different John Coles. They just happened to come in at about the same time, with the same name. Go figure.

SLATE OFFERS a quick guide to sodomy. Uh, thanks!

TED BARLOW IS BACK! And he’s the King of Spain!

And I am Marie of Roumania.

NOW THIS IS INTERESTING:

Pentagon officials said Tuesday that U.S. military weapons specialists have found at least a dozen Scud missiles aboard a ship stopped en route from North Korea several hundred miles off the coast southeast of Yemen in the Indian Ocean. . . .

The ship — called the So San — was stopped Monday by the Spanish navy frigate Navarra, which had to fire several warning shots to get it to halt, a senior aide to the Spanish defense minister told CNN.

Once the ship stopped, about a dozen armed Spanish naval inspectors flew over by helicopter and boarded it.

Although the ship did not have a flag, the aide said its crew was North Korean.

When the Spanish crew looked into the cargo hold, they found containers buried in the cement.

They opened one container and found what appeared to be missile parts, officials said. The Spanish crew then called for assistance from the United States, and a U.S. explosives ordnance disposal team went on board.

Sounds like there’s some good intelligence behind this. Of course, as a flagless vessel, it has no rights, which should make for a very thorough search.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

They thought they could get away with it.

They didn’t count on the Spanish navy.

Noo-oo-body expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Heh.

MOROCCO IS CRACKING DOWN on radical Islamists.

THE FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL ON TRENT LOTT:

Sen. Lott’s ill-considered remarks will serve only to reinforce the false stereotype that white conservatives are racists at heart. Republicans ought to ask themselves if they really want their party to continue to be represented by Trent Lott, or should the GOP look to a new Senate leader who is not encumbered by this unnecessary baggage?

Nightline will be doing a segment tonight.

UPDATE: The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism isn’t buying Lott’s apology:

“A poor choice of words” implies that had he expressed his sentiments more exactly, no one would have taken exception to his comments. This is falsified, however, by the fact that Lott has never explained what nice, innocuous sentiments he meant to express. The premise of Lott’s few defenders has been that he misspoke, that he did not mean what he in fact said. The evidence indicates that he in fact misspoke, and accidentally said what he meant.

“Few defenders” is the most amazing part of this, because it’s entirely true.

MORE ON LOTT:

When results from the polls in Missouri and Minnesota in last month’s elections gave Republicans control of the Senate once again, a Republican consultant I know threw up his hands in disgust and said “Christ, this means we’ll have Trent Lott as the leader again.”

Privately, a lot of other Republicans said the same thing but the party of the elephant got so wrapped up in celebrating their victories on election night they forgot what a problem Lott was for the party the last time they ran things in the Senate.

That failure to remember slapped them right in the face at a 100th birthday party for retiring Senator Strom Thurmond, one of the last of the old guard whose ideas should have left the Senate decades ago.

Yep. But are they smart enough to learn now?

YET ANOTHER ANTIWAR PUFF PIECE in the Washington Post. The ANSWER group gets a mention, but this article — which is by David Montgomery, not the predictably protester-friendly Evelyn Nieves — seems to whitewash the shady nature of that outfit, which David Corn has called a “front group” for the Stalinist “Worker’s World Party.” Here’s what Corn wrote:

The party advocates socialist revolution and abolishing private property. It is a fan of Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, and it hails North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il for preserving his country’s “socialist system,” which, according to the party’s newspaper, has kept North Korea “from falling under the sway of the transnational banks and corporations that dictate to most of the world.” The WWP has campaigned against the war-crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. A recent Workers World editorial declared, “Iraq has done absolutely nothing wrong.”

Officially, the organizer of the Washington demonstration was International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism). But ANSWER is run by WWP activists, to such an extent that it seems fair to dub it a WWP front. Several key ANSWER officials — including spokesperson Brian Becker — are WWP members. Many local offices for ANSWER’s protest were housed in WWP offices. Earlier this year, when ANSWER conducted a press briefing, at least five of the 13 speakers were WWP activists. They were each identified, though, in other ways, including as members of the International Action Center.

Here’s what Montgomery writes:

ANSWER is not a socialist organization, but key members of its brain trust happen to be active in the Workers World Party. Their party politics are irrelevant to the vast majority of people, like Democrat Condon, for example, who are attracted to a seasoned outfit that’s good at what it does.

I think the original term for those people is “useful idiots.”

MY PIECE ON THE AUSTRALIAN INTERNET DEBACLE is now online at The Australian.

COURTNEY LOVE IS THREATENING THE SMOKING GUN WITH LEGAL ACTION for posting official documents concerning a doctor charged with providing her with drugs.

Naturally, the main effect of that threat is to draw more attention to the charges — not that the idea of Courtney Love having a drug problem comes as a complete shock. I mean, just look at the picture. If she’s that concerned with her public image, shouldn’t she, well, be more concerned with her public image?

(Via Hit & Run).

A READER ON TRENT LOTT: Reader Eric Boysen writes:

You think Trent Lott is a racist and his slip-of-the-tongue just proves it. And every blogger you know agrees with you, so that just validates the proof. And since the blogosphere was first to grab the rope and find a hanging tree, it’s backslaps all around for this hi-tech lynching now, is that it??

“First the verdict, THEN the trial,” shouted the Red Queen.

What you are applauding, sir, is your assumption of Chief of the Thought Police and Head Executioner of any freedom of speech you do not agree with.

You’re too conceited, but you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

My reply was “F*ck that. I saw the video.” But this is absurd enough to answer at a bit more length. It’s not a “trial” because it’s not a “crime.” He said something in public, and he’s being criticized in public. That’s not a threat to free speech, it is free speech. What’s more, Lott has had plenty of time to respond, and has chosen not to except in the lamest and most unsatisfactory way. The result — heat from some people with weblogs — seems to me to be something short of “execution.”

PLAYING FOR TIME: Max Boot writes on Saddam’s game:

There is no mystery about why President Saddam Hussein chose to inundate the United Nations with 12,000 pages listing every food- processing facility, tannery and dairy in Iraq. The Butcher of Baghdad gave away the game in his first interview in 12 years, granted to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Usbu’a last month. “No doubt, time is working for us,” he said. “We have to buy some more time, and the American-British coalition will disintegrate because of internal reasons and the pressure of public opinion in American and British streets.”

I think that this “pressure of public opinion” language is a recognition by Saddam that the “anti-war” movement is objectively on his side, and not neutral. Of course, the old CIA would have just dusted Hans Blix’s room with a few anthrax spores. But we don’t do things like that now.

UPDATE: Via email, I learn that Jim Henley and Hesiod are unhappy with the remark about the antiwar movement being Saddam’s ally. But the quote in the story seems to me to indicate that Saddam sees it that way. And I think he’s right.

A PACK, NOT A HERD: Here’s an interesting story about a study of the World Trade Center evacuation. I’m glad to see that people are trying to learn from this experience.

VICAR TELLS CHILDREN SANTA IS DEAD: I’m sorry, but does anything non-risible come out of the Anglican clergy?

I’M VERY HAPPY WITH REASON’S NEW BLOG, HIT AND RUN, but I love Tim Blair’s comment.

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. And you will like it!

FOLLOWING INSTAPUNDIT’S LEAD, Paul Krugman is all over Trent Lott today. Krugman can’t resist adding a dig about liberal media bias by noting that the liberal mainstream press was slow to pick up on the story, but his column doesn’t mention that the non-liberal non-mainstream was pretty damned quick.

Quite a few readers suspect that Dems didn’t want to make too big a deal out of this because (1) if Lott steps down, they lose an issue for the next election; and (2) Lott’s well-established ineffectiveness as majority leader is an asset to the Democrats. Me, I’m not a conspiracist: I think it’s explained by laziness, chumminess with a frequent source, and the near-complete inability of the allegedly well-equipped mainstream media to react to a political story over a weekend.

Why are these guys so slow?

UPDATE: Reader William Modahl thinks I’m losing perspective:

Look, I hold no brief for Trent Lott, and his remarks were foolish at best. But today one of the significant obstacles to better race relations is the fact that the democrat party depends in many parts of the country on getting 95% of the black vote plus a minority of the white vote to be competitive. This means they have turned to stirring up racial paranoia of the worst sort – tarring Bush with dragging ads, creating a fictitious scenario of racially motivated church burnings, etc. Placing the worst interpretation on Lott’s remarks and then flogging the issue to death only plays into their hands. They want to open up old wounds of historical injustice for the purpose of exacerbating racial feelings today. Allowing yourself to get caught up in that agenda instead of focusing on today’s problems is a mistake.

Well, Modahl is certainly correct that most of today’s political race-baiting comes from the Democratic Party — and I’ve condemned it often enough. But Lott’s remarks really were, as Robert George points out, something sui generis and they deserve criticism just as much as McKinney’s hateful comments did.

And I think the fact that conservatives and libertarians are criticizing Lott adds credibility, just as I think the comparative silence of many mainstream lefty pundits on people like McKinney detracted from their credibility.

UPDATE: Best of the Web says that Krugman was really following Josh Marshall‘s lead. That’s really true — I first found out about Lott’s statements via Josh’s blog, and I think he was the first one on this story.

UNLIKE THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE, the Nobel Prize in Economics retains its prestige, and this year it’s going to experimental economists Vernon Smith of George Mason University and Daniel Kahneman of Princeton. You can watch the ceremonies via the web in a few minutes (10:30 a.m. ET) here.

ROBERT GEORGE WRITES IN NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE that Trent Lott must go:

The new statement itself was very nice and, all things considered, one might give Lott the benefit of the doubt — if he didn’t have a record, unmatched by any other current leading Republican of paying homage to a romanticized view of the “old South.” . . .

Most people don’t expect a 100-year old Thurmond or an 85-year-old Robert Byrd (D., W.V.) to completely escape their racist pasts. But Trent Lott is an adult baby boomer, of the same generation as the current and previous presidents. The leaders of this generation supposedly went through the ’60s and supposedly learned a few things about race. That seems true of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But Trent Lott is waxing nostalgic about the Confederacy and Dixiecrats. . . .

George W. Bush and his guru-advisor Karl Rove have to ask if this is a man who should have a prominent position in the “new” Republican party. It’s not as if there aren’t more interesting alternatives: The ideal choice would be telegenic Bill Frist of Tennessee. As chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he helped restore the GOP majority. (The one downside for Frist is that the surgeon may be too smart for the position. As one veteran Senate staffer put it, “The smart guys don’t win these leadership races because it would be too intimidating to the other senators. You have to be just smart enough to do the job, but not so smart as to make the other members of the club feel inadequate.”) . . .

Ultimately though Bush, Rove, and Co. have to ask: “Do they want someone who deserves to be Senate Majority Leader — or a man who seems to continually fantasize being white majority leader?”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

COLLIN MAY (himself a Canadian) writes that Canada is losing its coherence as a country and Canadians don’t seem to care.

HOWARD KURTZ is noting the gap between online punditry and establishment media where the Trent Lott affair is concerned.

SOME AUSTRALIAN GUY went and ruined the Internet. Dang.

I’ve got a somewhat more nuanced take coming out later today on The Australian‘s op-ed page. It’s not up yet, but should be in a couple of hours.

MINDLES H. DRECK pronounces Joe Lieberman’s criticism of the economy laughable.

THE DAILY KOS is putting together a network of political bloggers to cover state and local politics around the country. He wants a good mix of left-right, with an emphasis on people who cover the actual races and how issues are playing with voters. Check it out — it looks like a good opportunity for distributed coverage via the blogosphere.

LOTT HAS APOLOGIZED, though I’m not sure this will end the matter. On the other hand, Jesse Jackson (whose record in this area isn’t very clean: remember “Hymietown” and his mock-surprise at a black journalists’ meeting that so many black people could read and write?) is still on the attack, and he’s joined by professional race-baiter Al Sharpton. That’s pretty sure to drain the anti-Lott forces of moral authority in short order.

Then again, Tom Daschle is defending Lott, which, well, doesn’t help anybody much as far as I can tell.