Lexington

摘要

In 2000, the jibe went, the Republican Party convention in 1 Philadelphia was like a basketball game: everyone onstage was black and everyone in the audience was white. Cynics said the party would do anything to win black and Latino votes. But there was a simpler explanation. Republicans wanted to show themselves friendly to minorities because they have actually become more colour-blind, more like the party of Lincoln again. George Bush has followed up by reaching out to Latino voters, appointing blacks to prominent positions, and so on. And now, just as the Republican family seems on the point of convincing everybody of its respectability, along comes Trent Lott-like the mad wife in the attic whom everyone has been pretending isn't there. At the 100th birthday party for Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, Mr Lott, the Republicans' leader in the Senate, said: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we [in Mississippi] voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."