this story's been out there for several days, mainly on conservative blogs and FoxNews. Looks like it's finally breaking into traditional media, although it'll probably get buried in today's condi-thon and the news from iraq. http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040407-021034-5250r.htm -- Sen. Dodd accused of making racist comment WASHINGTON, April 7 (UPI) -- A mini-scandal has erupted in Congress as some Senate Republicans question whether comments made by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., were racist. In a speech on the Senate floor last Thursday marking Sen. Robert Byrd's 17,000th vote in the body, Dodd said the West Virginia Democrat, member of the Ku Klux Klan before taking office and opponent of the 1964 Civil Right Act, "would have been right during the great conflict of Civil War in this nation." Dodd's comments struck some as similar to remarks made by former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., that led to his losing the position. The comments were made as part of large praise of Byrd's great service as a Senator, which Dodd said, "would have been right at anytime." Lott claimed at a private party for former Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday that if Lott's 1948 segregationist presidential bid had succeeded, "We wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years." While some Republicans on Capitol Hill and conservative blacks pundits have ripped Dodd's comment -- in light of the Lott scandal -- Democratic leaders dismissed such comparisons.
Those comments may or may not be comporable. I don't know what views Dodd was talking about, and there is no context whatsoever. Byrd has been staunchly anti-war and left leaning during much of his time in the senate. He was also an Klansman at one point. But Byrd has a fighting spirit and has stood up and given some of the strongest condemnations of this administration. Without more information I can't say one or the other. But the possibility exists that the comments are comporable.
what does his anti-admin stance have to do with anything? trent lott said thurmond, who ran on the segregationist ticket, would have made a great president. dodd said byrd, a former clansman, would have been a great president during the civil war. it's directly comparable, if not worse. it's also worth notinng that it was the right that kept the lott story alive at first and were the loudest critics of lott. by contrast, the left has been conspicuously quiet on dodd's comments.
The comments strike me as fairly similar, although context does matter. For example, if he said "On matters of war, Byrd <I>would have been right during the great conflict of Civil War in this nation</i>" then that's a very different thing. Assuming the context is similar to Lott though (I imagine it is), I don't think the Democrats would want Dodd as their majority leader either.
I just think this is quite illustrative of the obvious left-ward tilt of our major media outlets. When Trent Lott made his obnoxiously stupid comments, he was pilloried from the high heavens. But when a liberal does it...nothing but yawns. Depressing. All I ask is for some consistency.
Yeah, I'd like to see some context too. The difference is, of course, that Dodd didn't say, "If KKK Byrd had been around during the Civil War, he would've been right". Lott made specific homage to Thurmond's segregation beliefs by citing his run for the President. At least, in my opinion.
nevermind. I like RM95's post better. Somebody should ask Dodd what the heck he meant. If he meant "Byrd was once a racist, and he would have been a racist during the civil war, and that would have been right," then I'm ready to get rid of him. To me, it sounds like just a stupid bland compliment about Byrd's thinking while he (Dodd) wasn't thinking about each point of Byrd's history.
Actually, the "major media" ignored the Lott affair for close to a week. As mentioned above, it was the hue & cry from conservatives, mainly internet blog types, that brought it to the forefront. Advocating a former KKK member as being fit for a position of power during the Civil War is pretty much pure idiocy. Here's the full quote in question, the rest of the speech is just a series of platitudes: It has often been said that the man and the moment come together. I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great Senator at any moment. Some were right for the time. Robert C. Byrd, in my view, would have been right at any time. He would have been right at the founding of this country. He would have been in the leadership crafting this Constitution. He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this Nation. He would have been right at the great moments of international threat we faced in the 20th century. I cannot think of a single moment in this Nation's 220-plus year history where he would not have been a valuable asset to this country. Certainly today that is not any less true. Well, Senator Dodd, I'm not sure how much of an asset your fellow Senator was during the Civil Rights campaign. Sad, I've always like Dodd, as opposed to the repulsive Lott.
Lott was pilloried largely by right wing conservative bloggers like Andrew Sullivan and David Frum, although Josh Marshall participated as well. His comment went largely unnoticed by the mainstream press until they raised a stink about it. I know you probably won't believe me, but its true. Check the link: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1040145065.php
dude, buck and i just made the exact same point. where's Josh now? where's the post, NYTimes, CNN, etc.?
Sounds pretty inconsequential when you read the larger chunk of his speech. But then, I also didn't think the Lott thing was as big a deal as it was made out to be either.
It matters. If Dodd was talking about the post Klansmen senatorial Byrd in matters of war, it certainly would not be the same. If Dodd was talking about the Klansmen version of Byrd then it certainly is as bad. Let me know the context and then I will comment on it.
via instapundit: http://instapundit.com -- Some commentators on Dodd’s praise of Robert Byrd assume that Byrd is so completely reconstructed that the Senator Byrd of the last twenty years, no longer the KKK leader he once was, would have been an asset projected back to the Civil War. But Byrd, while now criticizing slavery, refused on at least one important occasion to criticize the South’s entry into the Civil War and defended the motives and honor of those who fought for the South--this from a Senator representing West Virginia, a state that owes its existence to the loyalty of its people to the Union side. In 1993, Byrd joined with Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms to defend Congressional protection of the confederate flag as part of the insignia of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, opposing Carol Moseley Braun. Byrd on the floor of the Senate, 1993: Many informed people believe that the 11 states that comprised the Confederacy stood on solid constitutional ground. Abolitionist sentiment in the North changed the terms on which legal questions had originally been settled in the old Union. John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, in what is now West Virginia, made a peaceful settlement of the slavery question nearly impossible. Interestingly, only an estimated 5 percent of the population of the South owned slaves. Yet, hundreds of thousands of Southern men - most of them slaveless and poor - answered the call of the Confederate government to defend the sovereignty of their states. In West Virginia, it broke down about 2-to-1, I suppose, with about one-third supporting the Confederacy and the other two-thirds supporting the Union. Those men - brave and patriotic by their rights, almost to a fault - are the ancestors of millions upon millions of loyal, law-abiding American citizens today. In the classic Ken Burns Civil War series on public television, historian Shelby Foote recounted a discussion between a Confederate prisoner and his Yankee captor, who asked the Confederate soldier, "Why are you fighting us like this?" To which the Confederate soldier replied, "Because y'all are down here." That was not racism. That was not a defense of slavery. That was a man protecting his home, his family and his people. We are who we are today largely because of the War Between the States. Americans of Southern heritage need not defend slavery in order to memorialize the legacy of which they are a part. While such carefully measured statements--praising those who fought for the South while criticizing slavery--[are] not disgusting, I hope that this is not the sort of leadership that today’s Republicans and Democrats would have wanted in the Civil War, especially from a person who has been called the “political king” of West Virginia, a Union state. One must remember that most of the pro-slavery arguments, at least before 1830, admitted the immorality of slavery as the starting point. The question for many in both the South and the North was not slavery’s immorality, which was widely (though not universally) admitted, but what if anything to do about it.
You don't see a difference in kind between these two statements? Statement 1: This man was a great american and would have been great at anytime in americas history, even during the civil war. Statement 2: Had this man, who ran for president on a segregationist platform, won the presidency, America would be better off.
you left out the crucial detail of how a klansman would've been a great leader during the civil war, unless you're implying that nathan bedford forrestt was a great leader. great cavalryman perhaps, but wasn't particularly helpful during reconstruction.
Yes I left it out, but so did Dodd. Lott's reference was specifically to Thurmond's embarrassing segregationist past. Dodd's was not to Byrd's own embarrassing past, unless I'm missing something here.
not missing it, just cutting dodd some slack, which he doesn't really deserve. i was delighted to be rid of that boob lott, but dodd's comments are at least as bad and deserving of the same condemation, not rationalization. that's why some of us on the right rail continually about the double standard. what have you got to gain by defending dodd?
