Does Bill Frist have issues? No, not some comment he made on the hustings back in 1994. Not anything to do with his positions on abortion. Let's get to where the real action is: the online CV. Check out how long this thing is!!! Do we need to know about the "William Martin Award for best all around boy in the school, Montgomery Bell Academy, Nashville, Tennessee" from 1970? Or how about "United States House of Representatives, Intern, Congressman Joe L. Evins, Tennessee (1972)"? What's up with this guy? Okay, okay, you've done a lotta stuff. Sheesh!
--Josh Marshall
With Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond signing off the Senate airwaves in a few weeks, Democrats will look in vain for many more Senate Republicans who have the same good-ole-down-home racial philosophies as Trent Lott. But there's at least one out there who fits the bill pretty nicely. And I've been wondering when someone would turn their attention to him. Now someone has. Don't miss Sarah Wildman's new article on the gentleman from Alabama: Jeff Sessions.
--Josh Marshall
In recent days I've gotten a slew of emails asking, or accusing me of saying that the Republican party's a racist party. Or accusing me of saying that the only reason Republicans control the South is because of racial politics. And there have been a bunch of other similarly structured charges or questions, 
all of which muddy or confuse the question by framing it in ... well -- what else can you call it? -- black and white terms.
Like the Democratic party, the Republican party is far from a monolith. There are neo-conservatives, social-issue conservatives spread around the country, money-Republicans, libertarians. Some of these groups have views on racial matters which liberals or Democrat don't like. But they're all different in kind from the latter-day Dixiecrat wing of the party which is so potent in much of the South.
The closest analogue I can think of is to the Democratic party in the early and middle 20th century and their dominance of many of the corrupt party machines in the big cities of the North and Midwest.
A few readers have told me that my thinking on this is all wet because racism or racialist thinking just isn't part of conservative 'thought'. But whether this is true or not is irrelevant. This is about getting votes, not 'thought'. Ballot-box-stuffing wasn't part of Democratic 'thought' either in, say, the thirties. Many Dems found it abhorent. And most didn't practice it. But the party as whole benefited from it when it happened in Chicago because it kept Democratic congressmen or senators in Washington. (Needless to say, Republicans controlled corrupt machines too; just not as many. And election fraud never had anywhere the impact of the Republican absorption of Southern Dixiecrats.)
So just as we might say with the Democrats of 70 or 80 years ago, the issue isn't one of 'thought' or whether the whole party is 'corrupt' or 'racist'. These are false questions, either imprecisely posed or meant to obfuscate.
The question is whether the party as a whole benefits from the use of racism or race-tinged wedge issues in certain parts of the country and whether the party as a whole makes any efforts to say such behavior won't stand. In the case of Republicans and race the 
answer to the first question is clearly 'yes' and the answer to the second question is 'not nearly enough'.
The Democrats of course used to have this problem. For several decades of the last century they were the party of both the most liberal Northerners and the most reactionary Southerners -- liberal and reactionary on the issue of race in particular. Eventually, the strain just became too great. And Democrats outside the South began pushing for the national party to take a stronger stand on civil rights. That led -- among other things -- to the 1948 Dixiecrat break-away led by Strom Thurmond -- something you have heard of recently.
In any case, the latter-day Dixiecrats are an important part of the Republican party. Though many Republicans are repelled by its frequent appeals to race-politics, the party as a whole nonetheless benefits from it. So they have to take responsibility for it, even though Trent Lott-types have little to do with Wall Street Republicans or neo-conservative intellectuals. Republicans can't be the party of black opportunity and anti-black resentment no matter how big the tent. The Democrats tried it; it didn't work.
Now another point.
Earlier today I posted a line from Bill Frist's 1994 stump speech in which he said. "[Jim Sasser is] sending Tennessee money to Washington, to Marion Barry ... While I've been transplanting lungs and hearts to heal Tennesseans, Jim Sasser has been transplanting Tennesseans' wallets to Washington, home of Marion Barry."
Now I gave a lot of thought to whether I should post that or not. Marion Barry, as I said in the post, was a rotten mayor. Corrupt, drug-using, the list goes on and on. And one can't get into a situation where one can never criticize a black politician for fear of being tarred as using a racial code word. But look at the line and tell me what on earth this had to do with a Senate race in Tennessee. I think the answer is obvious: nothing.
Now, I don't think Bill Frist is a racist. Nor do I hope or expect he'll end up like Trent Lott. One reader -- flopping around like a fish-out-of-water making the case for Frist -- sent me this link about how Frist goes to Sudan to operate on African children. So how could he hate black people? How could he be a racist?
This misses the point. I doubt Frist is a racist. But this almost makes the point more clearly. Even some of best Southern Republicans seem incapable of resisting the temptation to dabble in racial code words and appeals on the stump. (In Frist's case, perhaps it was a rather notorious campaign consultant who worked for him that year and has a rep for such ugly tactics.)
I think the Bush family is a very similar case. I don't think this President Bush or the last one were racist in any way. Nor do I think either of them liked dabbling in racial politics. But in a pinch, when the chips were really down, both have been willing to do so. For this President Bush you need look no further than the South Carolina primary fight in February 2000.
The issue here isn't what's in your heart or what your party's 'thought' is. It's what you're willing to profit from, where you're willing to draw the line, what you do and don't look at and say 'I'm not going to put up with that in my party.'
On that count, the GOP falls really short.
Neo-conservative Republicans are very different from Dixiecrat Republicans. So why won't they stand up to them more often? Maybe they should try ...
--Josh Marshall
Is it okay with you if I needle Byron York a bit more about the South Dakota story? Thanks. I appreciate it.
As you know we've been talking about the South Dakota voter fraud hoax for months now. And the National Review's Byron York has been pushing the story heavily in the aftermath of Tim Johnson's reelection victory.
For a moment, let's set aside whether or not there's any truth to the charges. One of the biggest obstacles for Republicans who are pushing this story is South Dakota's Republican Attorney General, Mark Barnett, who insists, rather inconveniently, that the charges are pretty much all bogus.
So, predictably, the guns have now turned on Barnett.
In recent days the National Review has published a number of pieces claiming Barnett is stifling the investigation into voter fraud. The claim of late has been that Barnett is ignoring the voter fraud issue in hopes of future political gain. (Barnett and National Review have actually now gotten into a public spat.) As this editorial note from yesterday put it, Barnett is "a Republican with designs on the governor's office."
Can we unpack this for a moment?
If Barnett's angle is riding this to the governor's mansion, the guy is really thinking outside the box, isn't he?
Normally, if one wants to get nominated by one's party and then get elected, the angle is to curry favor with members of your party, not infuriate them by discrediting them, right? Now, the thinking at National Review seems to be that Barnett simply wants to avoid controversy and thus doesn't want to get involved in a messy voter fraud investigation that will make him too controversial to get elected. "Starting an aggressive and controversial investigation into voting irregularities," says York, "would be a sure way to anger at least half the electorate in his state."
But does even that make sense? If this were a race in California or New York or even Ohio, it might. In states with lots of Democrats, a Republican has to rely on large numbers of crossover Democrats, who might not react well to someone who pushed voter fraud charges -- rightly or wrongly -- against other Democrats. A stretch still, but not unreasonable.
Yet, as Republicans were very fond of noting -- until John Thune lost -- voter registration in South Dakota leans heavily Republican. Republican candidates don't need many crossover Dems. They don't need any. So what on earth would Barnett would be thinking? And if his angle were avoiding controversy wouldn't he just be taking some uncontroversial middle road? As National Review is rightly noting, he's got himself in quite a controversy by so aggressively seeking to refute National Review's claims.
Just because Barnett's a Republican and doesn't believe in the voter fraud charges doesn't mean the charges aren't true. But National Review seems to be straining to find any ulterior motive -- even the most ridiculous -- to explain Barnett's inconvenient apostasy.
Does National Review think Barnett is going to switch parties and become a Democrat?
Now that would be a story!
--Josh Marshall
"[Jim Sasser is] sending Tennessee money to Washington, to Marion Barry ... While I've been transplanting lungs and hearts to heal Tennesseans, Jim Sasser has been transplanting Tennesseans' wallets to Washington, home of Marion Barry." ... Bill Frist, 1994 campaign stump speech. Marion Barry was one of the worst things that ever happened to Washington, DC. No doubt about it. What he had to do with a Senate race in Tennessee isn't so clear.
P.S. Also see this article on North Carolina Congressman Cass Ballenger (R) and why he said yesterday that he found out-going Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney so annoying that it gave him "segregationist feelings."
--Josh Marshall
It's sad, really sad, to watch some conservatives try to wriggle out of, or turn the tide against Democrats, in this evolving national conversation about race. Patrick Ruffini runs a very nice blog from the rightward side of the political spectrum and he's just posted an entry attacking one of mine of last night. He argues that the Democrats have just as bad a history of race-bating in the urban centers of the North.
It's certainly true that, as Southerners of all political stripes have long said, racism isn't limited to the South. It's just more visible there.
That said, Ruffini's list of particulars is pretty revealing in its weakness. He says it's a list he came up with off the top of his head of instances since 1968. Oddly, most seem to be from 1968 and 1969. They're examples of the original Mayor Daley or George Wallace when he ran as a Democrat in 1972. Isn't this sort of pitiful?
Another example of his is former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo. That, of course, is a poor and telling example since Rizzo eventually became a Republican in large measure because of his admittedly rather unrefined views of racial matters. As in the South, there were tons of racist and anti-civil rights Democrats. Most became Republicans.
My point here is not to pile on. Democrats certainly aren't pure on race. Far from it. But I think most conservatives will realize that the argument Ruffini is trying to make is a losing one. Not to mention a pathetic one.
Many Republicans want to rid their party of this ugly baggage. Many more refuse to play this sort of politics for advantage. But over the last forty-odd years, many Republicans, in many small and large decisions, decided to organize much of our national and even more of our regional politics around race. They shouldn't whine. They shouldn't cry. They shouldn't make up excuses. They made their bed. Now they should sleep in it.
P.S. Ruffini says I have 'statist economic views'. What on earth he's talking about I have not a clue.
--Josh Marshall
Here's the transcript of Bill Clinton's brief exchange with a CNN reporter about the Trent Lott business ...
CNN: Do you have a comment on Senator Lott?
Clinton: No, other than....I think that -- obviously -- I don't agree with him.
But I think there is something a bit hypocritical about the way Republicans are jumping all over him. I think what they really are upset about is he made public their strategy.
The whole Republican apparatus supported campaigns in Georgia and South Carolina on the Confederate flag. There is no action coming out of the Justice Department against all those people, Republicans, who suppressed black voters in the South, in Arkansas and Louisiana, and lots of other places. Telephone operations telling people in Florida they didn't have to vote on Election Day, that they could vote on Saturday but not if they had parking tickets. I mean, this is their policy.
So I think the way that the Republicans treated Senator Lott is a pretty hypocritical since right now, their policy is in my view inimical to everything this country stands for. They tried to suppress black voting, they ran on the Conferederate flag in Georgia and South Carolina and from top to bottom Republicans supported them. So I don't see what they're jumping on Trent Lott about.
I think the Democrats can say we disagree with what he said and we don't think its right but that's the Republican policy. How do you think they got a majority in the South anyway?
CNN: So he should step down as majority leader?
Clinton: I think that's up to them. But I think that they can't say it with a straight face. How can they jump all over him when they're out there repressing and trying to run black voters away from polls and to run on the Confederate flag in Georgia and South Carolina. Look at their whole record. The others, how can they attack him? He just embarrassed them by saying in Washington what they do on the back roads every day.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
--Josh Marshall
Bill Clinton says that it's "pretty hypocritical" for Republicans to ditch Trent Lott for stating publicly what they say "on the back roads every day."
Here's the full quote he gave CNN yesterday ...
"How do they think they got a majority in the South anyway?" Clinton told CNN outside a business luncheon he was attending. "I think what they are really upset about is that he made public their strategy."He added: "They try to suppress black voting, they ran on the Confederate flag in Georgia and South Carolina, and from top to bottom the Republicans supported it."
No one compares to Bill Clinton when it comes to cutting to the chase and telling truths in a way sure to make Republicans howl. And howl they will. Because this statement is undeniably true. An RNC flack named Jim Dyke gets off a feeble reply in the CNN piece (see this piece for more on Jim Dyke and his ... well, just read the article). But this really gets us into the bigger story, the bigger picture.
One needn't think that the Republican party itself is racist. I don't. (In any case, that's too big a word, too general a question.) What the Republican party does have is a history -- not by accident, but by design -- of playing to and benefiting from the votes of racist and crypto-racist constituencies in certain parts of the country -- particularly, though not exclusively, in the South. They built the Republican party in the South on the foundation of racial resentment and civil rights rejectionism. Since then they've built a whole house on top of it. But the foundation's still there.
To deny this is to deny the obvious. There's just been a prohibition on saying it. And a good deal of the Republican displeasure with Lott -- though mixed with a lot of genuine outrage at his retrograde views -- is tied to his having brought this all into the open.
More later on bogus Republican outreach to African-Americans, voter suppression, and comic relief from the ridiculous Conrad Burns.
--Josh Marshall
Compare and contrast ...
"There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus," DiIulio tells Esquire. "What you've got is everything—and I mean everything—being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis"-- Esquire,
January 2003
The [decision over which side to take on the Michigan affirmative action case] is ultimately likely to be resolved by Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, who is the architect of Bush's effort to broaden the GOP appeal to minorities.-- Washington Post,
December 18th, 2002
Looks like DiIulio had no idea what he was talking about ...
--Josh Marshall
Oh man! There's a quote from Frank Luntz tonight on Hardball that's so choice it's almost beyond belief. We're going to be waiting with bated breath for the transcript to pop up on Nexis.
Basically, Luntz said that the "problems" Lott was talking about, which voting for Strom Thurmond would have avoided, were Bill Clinton's moral and sexual lapses. If ever there was a statement so ridiculous that the speaker deserved to be laughed out of three dimensional space, buddy, this is it.
Meanwhile, Chris Matthews is actually pretty good on the Trent Lott stuff, talking about the Dixiecrats and their exodus into the Republican party. The guy was up there speaking truth to power. Or at least to Bill Bennett. Same difference, basically.
--Josh Marshall
You can pretty much tell Trent Lott 
is toast when he tells Black Entertainment Television that he "absolutely" supports affirmative action.
One of the subtexts of the intra-Republican fight going on right now is that congressional Republicans are already looking to push an agenda that is, let's say, racially edgy. They don't want to hit that fight with Lott's baggage in tow.
Ed Kilgore is the Policy Director of the Democratic Leadership Council -- in other words, not exactly like a proxy for Al Sharpton or anything. And today he told me this ...
The angle some people may be missing about conservatives and Lott is that they are eager to pursue a number of things--a scaleback of affirmative action policies, private school vouchers, appointment of conservative judges with backgrounds more questionable than Lott's--that will create some concerns that the GOP is not exactly the reborn Party of Lincoln that appeared on TV screens at the 2000 convention. Given this agenda, conservatives don't want the task complicated by a Senate Leader (whom they don't like anyway) whose very name will conjure up racial dissension for the foreseeable future. For one thing, they're afraid the Bush White House will put the kibosh on controversial conservative initiatives if Lott has carry the water. So don't be fooled into thinking that GOP conservatives will drop an anvil on Lott strictly because they are horrified by his words.
I think that's exactly right. If Lott now tries to remake himself as a born-again civil rights man, that just makes him doubly useless to the fire-eaters in his caucus. Certainly not all Republican Senators see it in this light. I doubt Linc Chafee or McCain or Olympia Snowe look at it this way. But then that's why it's the conservatives in the caucus who are pushing hardest to dump him.
Also be sure to read this New Dem Daily (I'm sure written by Ed) on what the Lott scandal really means.
--Josh Marshall
I was wrong! I was wrong! There really is a voter fraud scandal in South Dakota -- the scandal surrounding the increasingly 
suspicious affidavits used by the state and national Republican parties to help prove their charges of voter fraud.
As we noted yesterday, South Dakota's Republican Attorney General Mark Barnett said that two of the three affidavits that alleged anything illegal turned out to be "either perjury or forgery." The signer of the third affidavit could not be located.
Now it turns out, according to an article by David Kranz in today's Argus Leader, that those affidavits were "pre-worded" by Republican lawyers involved in the RNC's voter fraud investigation.
The chairwoman of the Tripp County Republicans apparently just went through the reservations with pre-written 'I was in on voter fraud' affidavits to see if she could get anyone to sign. Here's the key passage ...
Kim Vanneman, of Winner, said in an interview Monday that she traveled through the Rosebud reservation, including the town of Mission, asking people if they had any evidence of wrongdoing on Election Day, particularly of Democrats paying people to vote.“I just went through the document, read it, asked them if it was correct, and if they wanted to sign it,” said Vanneman, a notary public who verified the statements.
Vanneman said she does not know the source of the original allegations, but word on the streets of Mission was that Democrats were paying $10 to those who would vote.
“I didn’t do the investigating,” she said. “Somebody else did that. They (the affidavits) came through work of different attorneys.”
For some reason, no one else involved in the Republican-backed investigation seems to have any idea where the affidavits came from either.
Other Republican lawyers involved in the effort -- including the previously mentioned John Lauck -- either don't know or won't say who was responsible for drawing up the "pre-worded" affidavits. They're referring all questions to the Republican National Committee.
I think we may have a scandal on our hands after all.
--Josh Marshall
Department of Curious Omissions: Last Friday in National Review Byron York wrote yet another article on purported "massive" South Dakota voter fraud scandal ("The South Dakota Vote Scandal: How High Does It Go?"). The article strongly implies that the State's Attorney General Mark Barnett is covering up evidence of Democratic voter fraud abuses. Never once in the article does York identify Barnett as the Republican State Attorney General. (He ran for the Republican gubernatorial nomination earlier this year.)
How high does the Democratic voter fraud scandal go? Apparently all the way up into the Republican party. Now that's massive!
--Josh Marshall
Back during the South Dakota Senate campaign we devoted lots of space to trumped-up Republican charges that Democrats had turned the state's Indian reservations into hotbeds of voter fraud. At some point I want to devote a long post to all the ins and outs of what happened in the voter fraud pseudo-scandal. But for now it's enough to remember that Republicans made a series of wild-eyed allegations of 'massive voter fraud.' Those charges were then amplified by a number of local reporters who turned out to be working in embarrassingly close coordination -- in one case, cohabiting -- with the Republican operatives who ginned up the accusations in the first place.
The whole thing was a rather shameless attempt to stymie efforts to get more people to exercise their legitimate right to vote -- and stir up politically-helpful racial animosity too. The 'massive fraud' charges eventually collapsed under the weight of their own ridiculousness, though this didn't stop Republican candidate John Thune and the RNC from a series of scurrilous ads and mailings accusing Democrat Tim Johnson of having a hand in the fraudulent voting.
On election day Johnson beat Thune by a minuscule margin of 524 votes. The Thune campaign grumbled about voter fraud. But in the absence of any evidence, Thune took the high road and conceded the race.
But there turned out to be an interesting division of labor: While Thune was taking the high road, his Republican operatives -- working for the RNC -- fanned out across the state's Indian reservations collecting affidavits purporting to prove widespread voter fraud -- enough to have cost Thune the election.
These affidavits were turned over to the State Attorney General Mark Barnett and, helpfully, to Byron York of the National Review and a number of other conservative news outlets. York's piece, which was based on the 50 RNC-collected affidavits, made the cover of the current issue of the National Review with the headline "South Dakota's Invalid Senator: How the Democrats Stole a Senate Seat."
As you might expect, the charges got lots of play in DC, reviving the claims of voter fraud. But if you were reading the South Dakota press you'd see that the state's Republican Attorney General, Mark Barnett, found the affidavits a good deal less impressive than York did. On December 10th he told the Rapid City Journal ...
Realistically, many of the things set out in those affidavits are not crimes. They are what I would call local election-board management problems. A fair number could be read as complaints about how effective the Democratic get-out-the-vote effort was. They had people watching, then jumping on the phone to one of their drivers.
Barnett didn't think any of the allegations would have changed the result of the election. But he said he would open investigations into "two or three affidavits out of 50" which included allegations of vote buying.
A few days later Barnett came back with the results of his investigation, recounted here in December 13th AP story ...
Barnett dismissed allegations in three affidavits, purportedly from people who were offered rides to the polling place in a Johnson van and offered $10 to vote. One of the people could not be located, and the others said they did not vote and were not offered money to vote. One said his signature had been forged on his affidavit, and the other said she signed hers because a friend told her to."These affidavits are either perjury or forgery, or call them what you will. They are just flat false," Barnett said.
So Republican attempts to substantiate their own charges of fraud and forgery end with RNC operatives caught filing perjurious or forged affidavits to prove their phony case. At least, so says South Dakota's Republican Attorney General.
--Josh Marshall
Trent Lott's career is currently swirling down the drain in part because he has a long-standing association with a white supremacist group called the Council of Conservative Citizens and because he gave a 1984 interview to a crypto-racist magazine called the Southern Partisan. Attorney General John Ashcroft is going on Larry King Live tomorrow night. Ashcroft also has at least some connection with the very same group and he gave an interview to the same magazine only four years ago.
Is Larry going to ask him about it? If not, why not? Should Ashcroft get a pass for some of the same stuff that's ending Lott's career?
His Larryness has his own website. And down in the lower lefthand corner there's a link where you can send an email suggesting a question for a guest ...
--Josh Marshall
Coming tomorrow: the final nail in the coffin of the Republican South Dakota voter fraud smear.
--Josh Marshall
Here are some further thoughts on the Lott controversy which I wrote for the Financial Times.
--Josh Marshall
Poor word choice of the day watch. Senator Richard Shelby on CNN's Late Edition: we should not "lynch" Senator Lott.
--Josh Marshall
This graf from an excellent and telling article in Sunday's Washington Post certainly has the smell of death about it.
In an indication of White House wariness about getting squarely behind Lott, sources said Lott sought statements of support last week from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell but was rebuffed. Both are African American. Some White House officials said it was clumsy of Lott to ask.
Grasping for straws. Not finding many straws.
--Josh Marshall
Last night we held an impromptu contest to see which reader could identify the nationally-prominent Republican politician who told Southern Partisan magazine ...
Your magazine also helps set the record straight. You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and [Jefferson] Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda. (See last night's post for the full post)
Now, the truth is that hundreds of readers wrote in with the correct answer: Attorney General John Ashcroft ("Missouri's Champion of States' Rights and Traditional Southern Values" according the headline on the interview's front page) who sat down with the Southern Partisan in 1998. That was when he was thinking of running for president and eager to burnish his standing with the ... well -- what shall we call it? -- the racial traditionalist crowd?
In any case, it's hard to announce a winner when there are so many winners and hard to give a prize for the same reason. So probably the best thing to do is just add the entire Ashcroft interview to the TPM Document Collection. You can find the quote above on page three of the interview. And don't miss what comes right after that quote, where Ashcroft says how real Missourians were part of the Confederacy too and bemoans the fact that the national history standards released in the early 1990s "make no mention of [Robert E.] Lee's military genius!" Or on page four where the interviewer gushes at Ashcroft after hearing what a staunch defender he is of the states' rights cause.
Southern Partisan: That's great. I did not realize that you'd been such a big part of fighting the states' rights fight.Senator Ashcroft: Well, frankly, there aren't any big parts. There are just a lot of soldiers, and I happened to have been one of the soldiers at whom they fired a shot...
Oh golly gee ...
--Josh Marshall
How about another quote from the Post article mentioned below...
The [White House] officials said Bush and his aides believe Democrats are hypocritically exploiting the issue out of partisan opportunism, and that the absence of news from the war on terrorism last week contributed to the focus on Lott. The officials said Bush would oppose any effort by Democrats to undermine Lott.
To an extent, the second clause of the first sentence is simply a statement of fact. But it's also, I think, a kinda revealing statement of how much the White House has to come rely upon and use the war on terrorism to muffle down domestic political problems.
You can believe in the necessity of the war on terrorism and still recognize how crassly the White House sometimes exploits it for the narrowest political purposes.
--Josh Marshall
