With Trent Lott’s Vote Back Into GOP Leadership, the Jig is Up on the Party’s ‘Inclusion’
By Deborah Mathis 

Last week, as the majority club got ready to resume the minority position come January, GOP senators elected Trent Lott of Mississippi as second highest ranking member in their conference — to which one can only say, if they are as interested in courting the black vote as their national party claims to be, they’ve got a funny way of showing it.

Let me refresh the record.

This is the same man who, in December 2002, got booted as Senate majority leader on account of remarks that were roundly excoriated as an endorsement of racism. Lott got it from all sides back then; as much as any outraged liberal, his fellow Republicans were crawling all over one another to get on the record of repudiation.

Desperate to save his political skin, Lott submitted to an interview with Ed Gordon on Black Entertainment Television, denounced his own remarks as “repugnant” and essentially promised to become black America’s new best friend.

“I will listen to and talk to African American leaders and African-American men and women,” he pledged.

Only Trent Lott knows if he lived up to that promise, but if he did, I’d like to know who in the world he consulted. Lott has had four years now to redeem himself, but his record — already lousy on civil rights, civil liberties and poor people’s issues — still stinks to high heaven.

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