What's a lame duck president to do when he looses both houses of Congress to the opposition party in mid-term elections? Learn to play a little nicer? Cultivate a spirit of cooperation and bipartisanship?
Well, no.
Bush's Iraq Study Group recommends he redouble his efforts to "win" the war: commit 20,000 new troops and "lower the goals, forget about the democracy crap, put more resources in, do it." Winning the war is a must if the Republicans want to regain the White House and take back some seats in Congress in 2008.
The other thing the Republicans must do is recapture its racist base, which seems to have lost faith in Bush's war, along with the rest of the US voters.
Re-enter Trent Lott.
Take it away Ze Frank:
While the Democrats are busy pickin' out drapes and arguin' about who's the prettiest girl at the ball, Republicans are back on the move.
At a recent speech, Presidential hopeful John McCain said the Republicans had lost the mid-term elections because they abandoned their principles.
Time to get back to basics.
In a Senate shuffle-de boogle-de, Trent Lott . . . was chosen for the Minority Whip, the second in command for the GOP.
Senator Lamar Alexander, who was was also up for that job, said that, "this proves that the U.S. Senate, like the American public, likes a come-back story."
It is a sweet little story, like Cinderella, but with racism.
Four years ago, Senator Lott was forced to resign from his Senate Republican leadership after a speech he gave at Senator Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party.
Lott said:
I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We're proud of it, and if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.
During that campaign, Strom Thurmand ran on a racial segregation platform, and Lott's remarks were widely considered - uh - insensitive. Uh - stoopid. It was "out of context."
Context, however, crept up on him by his involvement in groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens - sorta like the Boy Scouts, you know: sit around the fire and say things like:
Each one of the three major races plays a distinct role in history: the Whites were the creator of civilization, the Yellows its sustainers and copyists, the Blacks its destroyers. . . .
Start today, fellow white Americans: look at the faces around you. Find the faces like yours and see them as your brothers and sisters. Find the fair-skinned babies and see them as your children.
To be clear, those aren't Trent Lott quotes, those are Council of Conservative Citizen quotes, but, eh, he hangs [with them].
After four years of being the ugly step-daughter of the Republican movement, Lott's feets have once again found the pretty slipper that fits.
The above is a slightly edited transcript from the video, which is much funnier to watch than it is to read:
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