In his New Republic column Peter Beinart says conservatives are “Clueless” about Trent Lott’s racism. At least that’s what I think he means they’re clueless about.
Beinart begins by saying that Lott himself “still doesn’t have a clue” about what’s wrong with his positions, but then he quickly moves on to “the conservative response” to Lott that reveals “that some of the right still don’t fully get it.”
Beinart appears to be saying that what the right doesn’t “get” is that Lott’s Thurmond comments “are racist and segregationist.” This is an odd criticism. What, then, have Robert A. George, Andrew Sullivan, Charles Krauthammer, and David Frum — the “eloquence” of whose criticism he acknowledges — and the National Review (which he doesn’t call eloquent) been saying?
What really seems to get Beinart’s goat, however, is the National Review‘s complaint that much of the liberal criticism of Lott is “dishonest and opportunistic” because “liberals haven’t been as critical of Democrats,” as when Clinton praised Fulbright despite his defense of segregation and when Sen. Byrd escaped unscathed from his recent use of the “N” word. And it is here that Beinart himself seems to have quite a large blind spot when it comes to double standards, for his own argument serves to confirm the National Review charge:
But Byrd has largely repented for his past racist associations and offensive vocabulary by compiling a pretty good record on race over the last two decades. Unlike Lott, Byrd supported the 1982 extension of the Voting Rights Act and a federal holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. The NAACP’s last congressional report card gives Byrd 79 percent, compared with 12 percent for the Senate Republican leader.
In other words, you get a pass for racist comments if you vote right and get good grades on the NAACP report card. Isn’t this exactly what the National Review was complaining about?
