Lonzie Cox, Jr. – 2/7/05

This page was last updated on February 12, 2005.

Defeat Santorum and Hart; Lonzie Cox, Jr.; Beaver County Times; February 7, 2005. I am not related to Mr. Cox.

Mr. Cox is on the racism rampage again, though his indignation tends to be selective.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“I missed most of President Bush’s inauguration, but I’m aware he had the nerve to be introduced by U.S. Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi.”

[RWC] Sen. Lott was performing his duty as chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, a bipartisan committee. He was elected to that position by Congressional leadership in April 2004. From what I can tell, Sen. Lott would have performed the same duties on Inauguration Day even if John Kerry had won.

“Why not just enlist David Duke and go all the way toward encouraging racist activity? Lott lost his Republican leadership job in 2002 over remarks he made at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. Remember?”

[RWC] Though Mr. Cox wrote “Remember?”, he hopes you don’t. The “racist remarks” were part of a toast Sen. Lott gave at Sen. Thurmond’s birthday party. He said something like “we wouldn’t have today’s problems if you had been elected president,” referring to a campaign Thurmond ran in the late 1940s for a party that advocated segregation. By all accounts, Sen. Lott was simply trying to flatter a 100-year-old man. Was the comment stupid? Yes. Racist? Probably not, but I don’t know the man. I could be wrong, but I suspect Mr. Cox doesn’t know Sen. Lott either.

Mr. Cox also doesn’t want you to remember President Bush’s response. President Bush said, “Any suggestion that a segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive and it is wrong. Recent comments by Sen. Lott do not reflect the spirit of our country.”

While on race, Mr. Cox’s outrage appears to be selective. Mr. Cox tends to ignore Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV). Sen. Byrd was a Kleagle (organizer) in the KKKK (Knights of the Ku Klux Klan), said he would not serve in an integrated armed forces, filibustered and voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, voted against the nominations of Supreme Court Justices Thurgood Marshall (1967) and Clarence Thomas (1991), and referred to “white niggers” during a 2001 television interview. Most recently, he led a failed Senate effort to derail the appointment of Dr. Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State. I didn’t see a letter from Mr. Cox expressing outrage that a former KKK member would try to keep a black woman from becoming Secretary of State.

On the floor of the Senate last year, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) said Sen. Byrd “would have been a great senator at any moment. He would have been right at the founding of this country. He would have been in the leadership crafting this Constitution. He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this Nation.” An admitted racist would have been “a great senator” and “right” during the Civil War? Where was Mr. Cox’s condemnation of Sen. Dodd?

I wonder if Mr. Cox knows the meaning of “partisan.”

“Almost as disgusting as Lott was the spectacle of U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-PA., standing behind President Bush skinning and grinning with satisfaction. You could just see the pride gushing from Santorum, who, by the way, was Lott’s biggest supporter when Lott was under fire for his racist remarks.”

[RWC] Other than something you do to animals you kill, what is “skinning?”

“It’s obvious that Santorum is happy to be in a position to help Bush continue his policy of ruining America through mindless war, destroying Social Security, anti-labor legislation and school vouchers aimed at undermining the public schools. (Trent Lott’s state of Mississippi is usually rated as the poorest, the least educated and the most intolerant in the union.)”

[RWC] Blah, blah, blah. Geez, Mr. Cox, please come up with something more original than regurgitating the talking points of a failing political party. On second thought, no, keep repeating your talking points.

“Pennsylvania went to John Kerry in the 2004 election. Yet Beaver County and western Pennsylvania have to put up with Bush as president, Santorum as U.S. senator and Melissa Hart as our representative in congress.”

[RWC] Sounds as if Mr. Cox has something in common with the Confederacy. Confederates didn’t want Abraham Lincoln because of the Republican Party’s slavery position, so they elected their own president. It sounds like Mr. Cox feels John Kerry should be Pennsylvania’s president, as Jefferson Davis was for the Confederacy.

“Good grief. What did Beaver County do to deserve this right-wing trifecta? The Democratic Party leadership of this region is obligated to lead their party to success over the next two years.

“If they won’t do it, then someone else will. Defeating Santorum and Hart in 2006 is the only way to stop Pennsylvania’s slide toward Mississippi.”

[RWC] To be honest, local Democrats must be reasonably content with Rep. Hart. In neither of the last two elections did the Democrat Party put forth a credible effort to oust Rep. Hart.

Referring to President Bush, Rep. Hart, and Sen. Santorum as “right wing” shows how far left Mr. Cox resides. They may be Republicans, but their positions are barely right of Democrats of the JFK era.