Report: Democrats finally ready to kick ex-Klansman upstairs
Is it finally time for Sheets to go? John Bresnahan reports that some Dems are furtively looking for ways to send ol’ Bobby Byrd out to pasture with an “emeritus” title:
A group of Senate Democrats has begun quietly exploring ways to replace the venerable Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) as chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, believing he’s no longer physically up to the job, according to Democratic senators and leadership aides familiar with the discussions.
Under one scenario being circulated in Democratic circles, the 90-year-old Byrd would be named “chairman emeritus,” and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) would become “acting chairwoman” for the remainder of the 110th Congress.
Democratic insiders caution, though, that no decision has been made.
Don’t think he’s going to go quietly, though:
“We’ve had a very successful year,” said Byrd’s spokesman, Jesse Jacobs. “We’ve done not one, but two omnibus bills this year. We’ve done an Iraq supplemental, even after [Bush] vetoed the first one. And we created some unprecedented transparency as it relates to earmarks. That to me is a very successful year.”
Jacobs was referring to the fact that Democrats were forced to pass an omnibus spending bill early in the year after Republicans failed to pass the annual appropriations bills last year.
Byrd has “every intention of continuing his service as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee,” Jacobs added. “Sen. Byrd does not walk away from his commitment to the people of this country, his colleagues and the people of West Virginia.”
Flashback: My March 2001 column, “Sen. Robert Byrd, ex-Klansman.”
The “white nigger” video:
The Washington Post:
Despite his many achievements, however, the venerated Byrd has never been able to fully erase the stain of his association with one of the most reviled hate groups in the nation’s history.
“It has emerged throughout my life to haunt and embarrass me and has taught me in a very graphic way what one major mistake can do to one’s life, career, and reputation,” Byrd wrote in a new memoir — “Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields” — that will be published tomorrow by West Virginia University Press.
The 770-page book is the latest in a long series of attempts by the 87-year-old Democratic patriarch to try to explain an event early in his life that threatens to define him nearly as much as his achievements in the Senate. In it, Byrd says he viewed the Klan as a useful platform from which to launch his political career. He described it essentially as a fraternal group of elites — doctors, lawyers, clergy, judges and other “upstanding people” who at no time engaged in or preached violence against blacks, Jews or Catholics, who historically were targets of the Klan.
His latest account is consistent with others he has offered over the years that tend to minimize his direct involvement with the Klan and explain it as a youthful indiscretion. “My only explanation for the entire episode is that I was sorely afflicted with tunnel vision — a jejune and immature outlook — seeing only what I wanted to see because I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions,” Byrd wrote.
While Byrd provides the most detailed description of his early involvement with the Klan, conceding that he reflected “the fears and prejudices I had heard throughout my boyhood,” the account is not complete. He does not acknowledge the full length of time he spent as a Klan organizer and advocate. Nor does he make any mention of a particularly incendiary letter he wrote in 1945 complaining about efforts to integrate the military.
Byrd said in an interview last week that he never intended for his book to provide “finite details” of his Klan activities, but to show young people that there are serious consequences to one’s choices and that “you can rise above your past.”
He suggested that his career should be judged in light of all that he did subsequently to help lift his state out of poverty, and to bring basic and critically needed services and infrastructure to West Virginia.
“I grew up in a state where we didn’t have much hope,” Byrd said. “I wanted to help my people and give them hope. . . . I’m just proud that the people of West Virginia accepted me as I was and helped me along the way.”
CAGW: Robert Byrd, King of Pork.
More:
Byrd Watching
The vulnerable Bobby Byrd
The life and times of Robert “Sheets” Byrd
Bobby Byrd’s klan of “upstanding people”
And two good moments, because even an ex-Klansman can get it right sometimes:
“The people were appalled” (Byrd’s speech lambasting Democrat insanity over the Alito nomination).
See what others have said
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Hear ye Hear ye! I cast thy demon out! Out , I say. Out of this glorious body………(bable, babble)
DLTDHYOTWO.
Well, he called it a major mistake. So all is forgiven… Idiot.
Apparently it hasnt done that much to his reputation since the old fool keeps getting elected. Either that or the people in WV are just complete morons for supporting this douchebag.
When I interned on the Hill, I was stunned at how frail Senator Byrd was. A stiff breeze could knock him over.
I was even more stunned when he decided to run for reelection. This man has been responsible for a lot of good and a lot of bad in his Senate career. Regardless of your feelings toward his unfortunate history and his current politics, surely we can all agree that a man that frail shouldn’t have that much responsibility.
i guess if you put “white” in front of “ni99er” then that makes it perfectly ok. see, he’s not racist!
the klan created as a democrat insurgency in the south to overturn the freedom provided to blacks during the civil war. the majority of the targets of this insurgency was originally republicans never mind their race, just kill the republicans to overturn and regain slavery.
don’t care what this man says, he saw it right, as a platform to his democrat political career. that mistake is what got him elected to his position today. i really don’t beleive his statement about a mistake. i do believe that he now realizes the ‘haunting’ feeling that belonging to a group such as the klan can create on a person. but it definitely did help his career as a democrat.
Venerable, yeah, that’s the word I’d use, venerable. NOT!
It seems a little odd to be saying this, but I do believe that in areas where there were no Blacks, Jews, Catholics, etc., the Klan did function more as a community police/men’s club, dealing with deadbeats, habitual drunks, etc. in perhaps a little rough but non-lethal fashion. In other words, it could actually be a positive influence. There are still folks who can’t understand why people get so uptight about the Klan, simply because cross-burning and lynching did not happen around them, whereas they remember when the Klan paid a little visit to that drunk layabout Jimbob and scared him into sobering up and supporting his family….
That may go some way to explaining the response of West Virginia to Byrd.
“Regardless of your feelings toward his unfortunate history and his current politics, surely we can all agree that a man that frail shouldn’t have that much responsibility.”
i agree. why not convince Byrd of that? he’s doing a disservice to his constituency in his blatantly obvious self-serving attempt to keep office until he dies. and this goes for the stroke victim (i have forgotten his name) as well.
along the same lines, each person running for president who is currently in the senate needs to resign as well. they are also doing their constituency a disservice by missing critical votes in their self-serving attempt to maintain an office.
Byrd is the shining example of what is wrong with our government. He was able to send billions of other peoples tax dollars to his home state to get reelected over and over. Wasteful spending kept him in office when he should have had to get a real job decades ago. Good by, good riddance. May more of the self-serving crapweasels go with him.
Grey Fox,
saying the klan had some redeeming value is like saying islamic fascist have some redeeming value.
uhangtight,
I believe that the Klan was originally formed to combat the Union League, a very similar type of group. The Union League targeted blacks as well as whites, and may even have treated them worse (just as Black women were a whole lot more likely to be raped by union troops then where whites during the war). I have never heard that the ‘65-68 Klan where trying to reinstitute slavery - just trying avoid having their barns burned by the Union league and trying to do with violence what they couldn’t do with votes, since ex-Confederates were disenfranchised at the time.
Now, the second Klan was hate group, pure and simple…
Here’s my “scenario.” Dip him in bronze and mount him on a pedestal in the town square of either Hatfield or McCoy, WV.
Robert Byrd has been on the wrong side of a lot of stuff, and there are many things we can say about him, but I think I can forgive the “white nigger” comment. Chris Rock has a whole routine on the difference between “niggers” and regular people and concludes that there are some in every race. I happen to agree with Chris on this one, but since I am white I don’t use that word to describe it. Maybe Byrd should have learned that a long time ago, but I can still give him a pass, on that one.
If Trent Not-A-Lott praises him on his way out, will Trent have to resign again?
I remember some years ago watching on C-SPAN when Senator Byrd and other senators were questioning Gen. Hugh Shelton. The exression of pity and sympathy on the general’s face was the most notable thing I remember as Byrd sat there trembling, muttering, wandering and incoherent.
It was obvious then that it was time for him to hang up his cleats. Hard to imagine he’s in any better shape today.
Just imagine how different things would be if Byrd was a Republican.
You think he would’ve even been elected to the Senate in the first place?
#11 bloghooligan,
I doubt there is a group, no matter how evil, that doesn’t have at least one good point. “Redeeming?” Not in the sense that I use the word, to mean that it is worth having around.
Virtue is strength - a villain without some good qualities isn’t dangerous. Islamofascists are intelligent, dedicated, and brave (yes, they are, though their courage is a different type them we are used to). If they sat around all talking, why would we notice them?
I met some Air National Guardsmen that were pretty embarrassed about all the facilities that Byrd has been able to build in dedication to himself as part of their airbases. They stated they had more facilities then they needed while most Active Duty, Reserve, or Air National Guard units around the country were doing all they could to keep many buildings that should have been condemned in operation. He is the “King of Pork” in the Senate closely followed by Senator Stevens (R) of Alaska of the bridge to nowhere fame. He will not be missed if they manage to get him out of the Senate, but doubt if the idiots that vote for him will allow it.
It’s called herd mentality. Until he dies, they’ll just keep voting for him.
Grey Fox,
First, i have to disagree with you on your history of the Klan. the Klan formed because of the conditions whites returned home to after the Civil War - namely their land was destroyed or confiscated, and persons (whom they didn’t recognize as people) were now equal to them under the law. to say that the Klan formed in response to another group and their real intention wasn’t to return blacks into slavery, is really detached from history. black codes sprang up soon after reconstruction that effectively returned blacks to slavery.
Islamic fascist have no good point in my opinion. and honestly, if you think they do, i’d love to hear it.
Ghandi and MLK are examples of people who led movements for change without violence. revolution by way of violence seems rather immature given the 20th century examples of nonviolent change.
Byrd built his career as a leader in an organization bent on the subjugation of dark skinned Americans by destroying their family structures thereby destroying the very core of their culture, providing them a substandard education, forcing them through various terror tactics (mostly economic) to live in areas of concentrated poverty in substandard housing, falsely encouraged them to accept traitors being kept by the organization as their leaders thereby diminishing any real political power they should rightfully have, etc. It would take pages to list the horrors that organization unleashed on minority communities, tearing them apart slowly and painfully at every chance so they didn’t gain any real power and any power they did have could be used to support the organization setting up a vicious generational cycle. Sickening.
Oh, and he was also in the KKK before that.
Bloghooligan, you forget one thing: Non violence only works against a moral government. Remember Tienanmen Square?
Deep Diver.. you got that right.. but the KKK was a subordinate of the democrat party. check this out..
That link is not good if you are a Democrat searching for the truth. It is even worse if you are an African-Amreican and are searching for the truth about the Democrat party.
Of course, you will HAVE to believe history to believe that book is true. The DVD is just as good as the book BTW.
deepdiver:
Beauty!
“We’ve had a very successful year,” said Byrd’s spokesman, Jesse Jacobs.
I think Jesse meant to say he had a successful year as a unelected person pushing bills, didn’t you Jesse?
It’s not that Byrd won’t go without a fight it is his progressive staff that won’t.
The Klan was actually very common for many prominent democrats in the “Old South”. Some of you have mistaken the history a bit though. It was originally started by Nathan Bedford Forrest to fight off the “Carpet Baggers” or Northerners who were coming into the South and “making claims” for family homes and forcefully taking property from rightful landowners. As the acts of the Klan worsened and it deviated from its original purpose, Colonel Forrest left the group and disassociated himself from it.
Ummm, the Hatfields and McCoys were mostly in Kentucky, not in W. Va. In the entire “feud” only 42 people died and it was a relatively small feud given the activities of the time. It was one of the first cases of sensationalism by the drain dream media. Many feuds wiped out entire families. Both the Hatfields and McCoys have prospered even moving into West Virginia up around Braxton, Gilmer and Calhoun counties.
As to Byrd continually getting reelected, well, why I do not have any justifiable explanation for that, let us just say that it was one of the reasons I left such a beautiful part of the country. The clan and the rest of the democrats were a not too distant reason as well.
Translation: We don’t have to hide our pork because there’s nothing you can do about it.
Good article on Gandhi.
Byrd is on Cspan right at this moment as part of the tributes to Trent Lott on his retirement.
He required assistance to hook his microphone on his jacket pocket and he is reading from prepared remarks as always.
He himself should have retired last term around, because if you watch him it would be easy to understand how he would be an issue in any committee hearing where he has to react on the fly to events as they occur.
Kinda like the ‘Vlaams Belang/Anti-Jihad Conference in Brussels Connection’ ‘thang’ this fall…..when the Grand Lizard dared to question the past-&-not-so affiliations of VB w/that same element of social terrorists that Mr. Byrd had beers with.
Guilty by proxy of association/schmoozing!!!
deepdiver
excellent
Herd mentality is right. Unfortunately, it’s not limited to the left. Strom Thurmond served in the Senate long past his ability to serve properly. Both are prime examples of why we need term limits in the legislature.
yes,let the door hit him on the way out.ASAP
Given the open racial advocacy of Hispanic groups and people like Michelle Obama and Okra Winfrey, I imagine white advocacy groups will re-emerge out of self-defense.
The population of illegal immigrants hasn’t exploded in WV yet, the way it has in some other states (maybe due to the climate and lack of work). Because of that, people can overlook his stance on certain social programs, as long as they’re getting what they want from him.
That’s the reason people in WV love Byrd. He gives them what they want. Build a road, bridge, library, school, stoplight, whatever….(and his name is on all of it.)
and even better in their opinion, and unfortunately for us , he uses money from the rest of us to do it.
He’ll go down in History as the Pork-Barrel KING. However, since liberals are writing history now, we’ll probably never see a mention of it….
Am I the only one around here concerned with the other half of this equation? The idea of “my” senator, Patty Murray, gaining more power and leverage in the United States Senate is downright scary. This woman is dreadful. end the tyranny of the King and Pierce County voters! Get her and her buddy Maria Cant(do)well OUT!
“I grew up in WV and I moved away after college.” With that one sentence I have provided a partial explanation of why Robert Byrd is continually elected to the Senate. West Virginia has the highest average aged population in the U. S. With few job prospects many young West Virginians move away to find work.
New jobs in WV are largely government related, either state of federal. Sen Byrd used his influence to have federal agencies or branches located in the state. A good example of this is the FBI’s national finger print center. It is located just outside Clarksburg WV. Thus the aging population looks on Byrd as the provider of the goodies and rewards him with term after term in the Senate.
I for one would be very interested to know just how many “former” West Virginians there are compared to how many are left.
As an addition to my previous post, all my immediate family still live in WV. Unfortunatley they all still vote for this senile crapweasel.
Byrd should retire to Chicago so that when when his time comes, he’ll still be able to vote.
Imagine my surprise, out of all the places in the world to meet a real hillbilly, I met another one when I moved to the Philippines. I grew up on the Braxton/Gilmer county line and he grew up around Buckhannon so you can add two “Ex” Mountaineers to your list.
I agree with you ArmoredCav, as she is my senator too. Yes Canwell is the other and I never understood how she passes herself off as a mom in tennis shoes. She is the ulimate of the elitiests. We were better off with Scoop Jackson then these neo Mcgovernites.
The Democrat deep south also had the Bible when Byrd grew up there, and knew right from wrong, and he wasn’t raised to adulthood before the civil war. What is it about hating and horrendously hurting other human beings that he just didn’t understand from a moral perspective “early in life”, when he was enough of an adult to start a political career and hold an office in the world’s most notorious racist organization? This is BS on a massive scale, and Republicans should call out every long-term Democrat member in congress for racism by association - which fits the strict legal definition of “conspiracy” by the way - for allowing this vermin to not just function within their midst, but to actually head committees as well. Remember two words: Trent Lott, and choke on the horrible, rage-inducing hypocrasy.
And that’s the reason?! Alas, that is the reason. Having a having a black-skin-color-hating racist bigot - an official in a racist organization that promotes hatred of others according to skin color - was fine and dandy. He just got too old to physically do the job the way he once did.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the real Democrat Party.
Gay is the new Black.
LOL
First of all I’m a decendant of the Hatfield’s so don’t insult me again for lobbying for a bronze statue of Bird in any city in WV. Second the McCoy’s where from Kentucky and as far as I know their are not town’s named Hatfield or McCoy in WV. I think when he passes they should burry him quickly forget about him and rename everything in the state something besides Robert Bird.
Just think…he can retire and return to all those cross burnings he has had to miss while he pretended to be a “tolerant” Liberal. Now he can kick off his shoes and let the golden years begin. Wonder what kinds of “slip ups” will be said at his retirement that will be forgiven and ignored, unlike at Strom Thurmond’s?
I don’t know, if the dead are going to vote, aren’t they entitled to representation?
I’ll light a cross for him…