Reid Unlikely to Meet Lott’s Fate - Roll Call

Reid Unlikely to Meet Lott’s Fate - Roll Call: "Despite GOP demands that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) follow the 2002 example of then-Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and resign his leadership post, observers said key differences in the two Senators’ responses to their respective scandals mean Reid will remain the chamber’s top Democrat.

While Reid’s characterization of President Barack Obama as a “light skinned” black with no “Negro dialect” has caught him in an unwanted scandal, Republicans and Democrats alike argued that Lott was brought down by his own slow response, internal opposition to his leadership and a hostile White House.

“The president is the leader of the party. When his team is giving the ‘Caesar’s thumbs down,’ it makes it very problematic and difficult to survive a crisis,” said a Lott insider who worked for the lawmaker at the time.

Lott’s downfall ostensibly stemmed from his Dec. 5, 2002, speech at a party celebrating the 100th birthday of Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). During his speech, Lott quipped that the country would have been better off if Thurmond, most famous for leading a filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, had been elected president in 1948. His comments were similar to those he delivered in a 1980 speech about Thurmond.

News of the speech, which came at the start of a Congressional recess, was slow to spread, and with Lott on vacation in the Florida Keys, it was two days later that his office commented — downplaying the remarks as nothing more than a compliment to the elderly lawmaker.

By contrast, Reid’s office moved quickly to quash the scandal over his comments. Although Reid aides said he made his comments to author Mark Halperin during a 2008 “private” conversation on the presidential election, word did not leak until this weekend as part of news reports on Halperin’s book."