Let us go forward 10 years to last Friday. Trent Lott had resigned as Majority Leader of the United States Senate. It was the right thing to do as much because of what he said at Strom Thurmond's birthday party as it was for how he handled it. Both showed a lack of leadership. He played into the "Republicans are Racist" mentality and that harmed the party. How much he harmed it we will find out in a few weeks.
Hillary Clinton weighed in on this issue with comments that the Republican Party constantly exploited race, that they won two Senate seats on the Confederate Flag and that Lott's comments reflected Republican comments in the "backrooms and the back roads of the South." Earlier in the week, she commented that Republicans meet in the backrooms with Grover Norquist of Americans for Fair Taxation to plan their radio attacks with the likes of Sean Hannity. It seems that Mrs. Clinton is obsessed with what is going on in "backrooms" all over this country.
This is clearly conjecture, because it is unlikely that Hillary Clinton gets invited to any Republican strategy meetings. It is more likely that this is how Mrs. Clinton conducts her own business. There are inaccuracies in most of what she said. First of all, it is Democrats that pander to Blacks and election time but do not put Blacks in serious leadership positions. Jamal Simmons, Communications Director for the failed Max Cleland reelection campaign, said on December 10th in a radio interview on WDUN that the Democratic Party is around in the Black community during elections but not in between.
None of the Senate races in the South were decided by the Confederate Flag. In Georgia, where the changing of a flag was an issue in the Governor's race, polling shows that education reform and ethics were bigger issues for voters than the flag. While most Georgians favored changing the flag, it was Governor Barnes' process of secret meetings and no discussion that most people objected to on this issue. Sonny Perdue beat incumbent Governor Roy Barnes by about 70,000 votes. There aren't that many "flag nuts" in Georgia.
Finally, as far as what goes on in the backrooms and the back roads of the South, Mrs. Clinton hasn't lived in the South for 10 years and the 10 years before that she lived primarily in the Arkansas governor's mansion. That cannot be characterized by anyone as living in the real world. She has not seen the back roads of any Southern town in a generation.
Shelby Steele of Stanford wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week, the new trust in Republicans on social issues by the Black middle class is fragile and incidents like this one can easily damage it. This relationship must be nurtured, he goes on to say, because the Republican Party is the only one that has had new and successful ideas on social issues in the past 20 years.
As far as those of us who live, work and raise our children in the South, there is no code language and we say what we mean and mean what we say whether we are Democrats or Republicans. Most of us get along and most of us do not know anyone who would suggest that the South would be better with segregation. There are those that embody the ideas that Mrs. Clinton suggested, but they are shunned by the mainstream and that is as it should be. We still have a long way to go but we have come a long way, also.
Let me know what you think about this and other opinions listed here. You can listen to me weekdays just after 9 am on WDUN AM 550 and see me weekly on Fox 5 Atlanta's The Georgia Gang. Log on the marthazoller.com to find out when my regional and national appearances are and you can email me at [email protected].
http://accesswdun.com/article/2003/1/184750