Senators for Segregation

Remember when Trent Lott was lavishing praise on Strom Thurmond's 1948 run for president on a white supremacist platform? Remember how most of his fellow conservatives disavowed him? Well, here's Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) praising Lott's defense of white supremacy. And then Orrin Hatch (R-UT) did it. And then Arlen Specter (R-PA) did it. I kind of assume Specter's too old to run for another term, and Utah's the most Republican state in the country, but Smith needs to run for re-election in Oregon next year so I'm pretty surprised to see this sort of gaffe coming from him. It's true that his second-degree praise of Thurmond and the Dixiecrats isn't quite as egregious as Lott's, but this is still pretty despicable.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/12/senators-for-segregation/47490/