A Lott More

Sorry, I couldn't resist...

Good analysis of the GOP and the race issue in the NYTimes:

Ever since the Republican Party in the South was reborn by hostility to the civil rights legislation of the 1960's, the national party has increasingly depended on Southern votes while insisting to Northern moderates that it is still the party of Lincoln... Those balancing efforts usually work. But occasionally they blow up in the party's face, as seemed to occur this week... This week, the juggling has been less than nimble. For six days after Mr. Lott approvingly recalled Strom Thurmond's segregationist Dixiecrat campaign for president in 1948, Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, brushed off the episode as completed by Mr. Lott's apologies. But the controversy did not subside. And the political reality, Mr. Wirthlin said today, is that "Republicans cannot afford to alienate the South, but to alienate the suburbs on a racist charge would even be more damaging."