Trent Lott said the country would be better off if Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948. He may have been thinking of problems other than race, but the memory of the Dixiecrat movement only brings to mind segregationist policy. If he was only being nice to an old man on his birthday, all should be forgiven. Sadly, Lott and other senators, including former Grand Wizard of the KKK Robert Byrd, have a hidden past they would prefer we forget.

The Clinton/Carville plan is to portray Republicans as a racist party, but let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Just as they over-played their hand during the Paul Wellstone memorial, efforts to connect the GOP with a racist past will fail. They forget the Dixiecrats were Democrats.

Trent Lott resigned as majority leader after many Republicans jumped on the resignation bandwagon as a convenient excuse to dump a man viewed as the master of pre-emptive surrender to Democrats. By all accounts, Lott is a decent man always open to accommodation. It is cheap politics for conservatives to pile on Trent Lott for political gain; cheaper still for Democrats to use a racial shotgun on the opposition.

The post of majority leader was made powerful by Lyndon Johnson in the 1950s. Democrat Johnson climbed to power in south Texas using a brand of race-baiting techniques learned from his mentor, House Speaker Sam Rayburn. During this time, President Eisenhower signed the first civil-rights bill of the 20th century.

People forget it was Richard Nixon who met with Martin Luther King in 1960 and it was the Kennedys who allowed his phone to be tapped. Indeed, the history of civil rights, as taught by leftists, would have you believe Republicans, not Democrat George Wallace, stood in that Alabama school doorway.

With the help of Republican Sen. Hugh Scott, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. A greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats passed this landmark legislation, so its curious how history has been rewritten to satisfy Democrat strategy.

If you think the problem is only within Southern Democrats, think again. Selma was nothing compared to the racism of south Boston during the forced busing of the 1970s. There are Dixiecrats dixiepublicans, yankeecrats and yankeepublicans. Racism is not a Southern phenomenon.

George Wallace was confined to a wheelchair in life-long pain after his assassination attempt. It was his care, mostly by black medical staff, that changed his heart. Redemption is possible even for the hard-core racist, so Trent Lotts conversion will be easy by comparison. On the other hand, Democrat adherence to racial McCarthyism will be a harder habit to break.