Posted 6:09 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Next Deserving Targets: Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris

One of the foundations of this blog is the hope of contributing to the goal of a world in which George W. Bush wakes up every day for the rest of his life wishing that he hadn’t stolen the 2000 election. This goal also extends to Bush’s enablers in the state of Florida (specifically his brother Jeb and Katherine Harris) and to his enablers in the press.

I am ecstatic that the mainstream media--at long last—is taking a long and hard look at Lott’s long history of repugnant appeals to racists (This might not have been the case had it not been for the doggedness of bloggers like Atrios and Joshua Micah Marshall). However, Lott’s racist comments at Trent Lott’s birthday celebration are minor compared to Jeb Bush’s and Katherine Harris’ racist deeds. While Lott has repeatedly waxed fondly of the days in which minorities didn’t possess civil rights, Jeb and company made this a reality in Florida with the systematic disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of mostly minority voters with the phony felony voter purge. Greg Palast, who was working for the BBC, did some top-notch investigative reporting on the felony voter purge/scam. This story was prominent on the BBC in Great Britain. There was a virtual blackout in the United States of this information from the mainstream media. Why is it that one had to have gone to Europe to see a news broadcast about this appalling denial of the rights of American citizens?

George W. Bush was right when he said that “recent comments by Senator Lott do not reflect the spirit of our country.” However, he was dead wrong when he went on and said, “...the founding ideals of the political party I represent was and remains today the equal dignity and equal rights of every American.” The current Bush regime is a direct result of the intentional deprivation of the rights of minority voters in Florida by Republicans. Like Lott, the people behind the 2000 coup are antithetical to America’s values; unlike Lott, it was their actions, not their words that serve as a testament of the racist legacy of the contemporary Republican Party. The long overdue repudiation of Lott’s discredited ideas should be just the beginning. Trent Lott is finally paying a price for his racist words. Jeb Crow and Katherine Harris need to pay a price for their racist actions; they should be the next targets. They deserve no quarter.