Monsters From The Id

Lott's fall marks a permanent injury to the double standard that has allowed the Republican party to maintain a political base among those nostalgic for the South's segregated past. Yesterday, Bill Clinton put this succinctly enough (text courtesy of Josh Marshall):

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 . . . How do you think they got a majority in the South anyway?

As a result of the nation's refreshed awareness of Nixon's still operative "Southern Strategy," a more searching scrutiny will henceforth be applied to every suspicious Republican action -- especially to the nomination of judicial candidates like the odious Mississippian Charles Pickering (above left), championed by Lott, and whose nomination to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is now certainly dead despite Republican vows to revive it when they assume the Senate majority next month. Pickering's squirming evasions and selective memory during his confirmation hearings prefigure what will become known as the Lott Test: the vetting and rejection of anybody guilty of coded speech lending succor to segregationists.

This account (from the National Organization for Women) of Pickering's Feb. 2002 hearing reads almost like a dress rehearsal of the issues that arose during the Lott affair. I think the following paragraphs are worth quoting in full.

Committee Democrats also focused on Pickering's civil rights record, at the center of the controversy surrounding his nomination. Of particular concern to Democratic senators are Pickering's ties to Mississippi's Sovereignty Commission, a state-funded agency established after Brown v. Board of Education to oppose integration efforts. Probing Pickering's relationship to this group, Feinstein asked Pickering about his decision -- while serving in the Mississippi state senate -- to twice vote to fund this group, which monitored civil rights leaders in the 1960s and 1970s. Pickering alleged that at the time of the vote, he did not realize the Commission was still functional, then stated he would not have voted the same way today.

Shedding more light on the nominee's past, Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) questioned Pickering about the statements he made when he switched to the Republican party in 1964, the year African-Americans intensified their efforts to get the vote in Mississippi and other states across the South. At the time, Pickering allegedly stated that Mississippi "had been heaped upon with humiliation" by the national Democratic party's support of many civil rights initiatives and that the "Republican party was the only hope for rescuing Mississippi from socialism." Pickering offered a convoluted, directionless explanation and concluded by saying he felt that African Americans should have the right to vote. Only after further prodding by Feingold did Pickering grudgingly admit that today he would not have made the same statements he made then.

Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) broached the issue of Pickering's role as judge in the 1994 trial of a man accused, along with two others, of burning an 8-foot cross on the lawn of an interracial couple. Pickering also faced questions about the trial from John Edwards (D-N.C.), who said that Pickering had offered to grant a new trial, on his own motion. Pickering first denied the allegations, then stated he had "no recollection of having said that." When Durbin asked why Pickering had gone to such great lengths to assist the defendant, Pickering replied that he was concerned about the unfair disparity in sentencing. (The other two defendants, who pleaded guilty, received less severe sentences.)

Another troubling statement came after Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) asked Pickering to provide examples of his progressive stance on civil rights: Pickering described how he and his wife had the African-American friend of their son as a dinner guest.

In answer to a question posed by Durbin, Pickering attempted to justify calling his former law partner -- a self-described firm believer in segregation who allegedly stated he would not allow African-American children in schools -- a progressive in terms of racial relations.

Lott's Legacy: The Lott Test

Lott Quits