EDITORIAL
GOP continues to gain from racial hypocrisy

Republicans bristled furiously last month when confronted with the charge that Sen. Trent Lott was being dumped from his leadership position for expressing too honestly a sentiment that he is probably not alone in harboring.

They quickly lined up against Lott when he failed to disentangle himself from the fallout resulting from his racially insensitive remark on Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday.

"I think what they are really upset about," said former President Bill Clinton, "is that he made public their strategy." The strategy in essence consists of politically correct — and often entirely honest — expressions on race, while refusing to decry such efforts in the Deep South to turn back the clock as restoration of the Confederate flag.

We're sure that most of today's Republican members of Congress are not racists — including Lott. But welcoming the votes of those who are has been an unspoken part of the strategy that put Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes in the White House.

Don't believe that? Then have a look at the Republicans' behavior before the ink on Lott's disgrace was scarcely dry: First, rather than a dark corner on a back bench, they gave Lott chairmanship of an important Senate committee. Second, the White House renominated Charles Pickering, a Mississippi protégé of Lott's, to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Lott's gaffe, in which he pined out loud for the good old days of segregation, was bad enough. But Pickering's anti-minority performance as a judge — particularly in reducing the sentence of a cross-burner — amounts to contemporaneous and ongoing action, not words.

Reminding that "the federal courts have served as the shield protecting basic civil rights in this country," Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer charged that Pickering's renomination "is part of a Bush administration plan to destroy basic civil rights in America."

Schumer may exaggerate, but his words give pause to those of us who anticipate that President Bush may soon have the opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court justice.

Cynics think Bush renominated Pickering simply because, since the Senate now is run by the Republicans, he can. Senate Democrats contemplate a filibuster, but concede that the Republicans have the votes to put Pickering on the appeals bench.

What's shameful is the silence of the Republicans who know it's wrong but benefit from it.