Empty gesture…

…from the full of shit.

Even though he is technically not a dog, George Allen still seen here getting a hearty Senatorial reach-around from fellow obtuse, Republican Christiopath, Ricky Santorum.

This from the Chicago Tribune...

Senate to Atone for Lynching Ban Delays
By Associated Press
Published June 13, 2005, 10:43 AM CDT
WASHINGTON -- The Senate seldom says it's sorry, although it is now ready to officially express its remorse over the failure to outlaw lynching in the United States.

A resolution that the chamber was likely to take up Monday voices regret for the Senate's unwillingness for years to pass a law stopping a crime that cost the lives of over 4,700 people, mostly blacks, between 1882 and 1968.

Doria Dee Johnson, the great-great granddaughter of a black South Carolina farmer who was killed by a white mob nearly a century ago, was to be on hand for the floor vote.

The Evanston, Ill., woman has said that her family "lost property and family solidarity that still affects us today" when Anthony Crawford, a wealthy cotton farmer, was killed in 1916 by several hundred residents of Abbeville, S.C. Ms. Johnson today is an author and frequent lecturer on the subject of lynchings.

In the past, efforts to pass such legislation fell victim to Senate filibusters despite pleas for its passage by seven presidents, among others, between 1890 and 1952.

The Senate resolution is sponsored by Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and George Allen, R-Va. The bill, likely to be subject to a voice vote, states that nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in the first half of the 20th century but that nothing got through.

The nonbinding measure apologizes for this failure and expresses "most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching."
...

I’m really am glad the victims got an apology...empty, non-binding and ouchless though it may be. I’m not going to presume to guess what the family of Anthony Crawford might need or may feel, or any of the other 4,700 families who were lost during the 60-year reign of terror waged almost exclusively by the Southern Christian Segregationist Insurgency.

And this was a war, every bit as much as Iraq is a war.

This was a war that resulted in the wanton, terrorist murders of 1,700 more innocent civilians than were killed on 9/11.

This was a war that was waged by “former regime elements” of a brutal, repressive totalitarian Confederate system.

This was a war where thugs, lunatics and mass murderers were protected by Christian Southern Senators in the name of State’s Rights.

This was a war that showed than an objectively Evil and Morally Degenerate ideology could survive generation after generation with wide popular support as long as it wrapped itself in flags and Bibles and kept the people stupid and fearful.

And this is a war that in many, tangible ways is still very much going on.

Mary Landrieu, I could not care less about: she has distinguished herself by fighting for and eking out a Democratic victory in Louisiana…and then voting almost straight Accommodationist Ticket since the minute she started collecting her Senatorial paycheck. By her politics she’s what we in Illinois would call “a Republican”, and by her actions she is fast becoming an irrelevant wisp of nothing.

Allen, OTOH, is angling for President, and he meets the Basic GOP qualifications – Room temperature IQ, embarrassing lack of understanding of basic issues, White, Evangelical and Bulletproof Hair – so him I‘m interested in.

And from Allen’s perspective – and frankly, from the perspective of all of the Shining Path Republicans – this is an utterly meaningless, utterly cynical gesture. They want to show how concerned they are about civil rights and the horrific, racist legacy of their predecessors…without having to pay any actual price or bear any actual burden.

Lynching was the enforcement arm of a system of White Male Southern Christian privilege, a system created by Bad Government and given ethical cover by Bad Religion. It’s unmistakable spoor is ignorance, intolerance, a sense of racial entitlement, whining victimhood, Conservative Evangelical Fundamentalism, gun lust and a rabid fear of every fucking thing that moves that doesn’t look like them.

In other words, the Jerry Falwell Wing of the GOP.

If Republicans were remotely interested in ACTUAL reform, they would have called for the closing of Segregationist Academies that have sprung up like poison toadstools all over the South. The furling once and for all of the Confederate Lynching Flag.

If they were remotely serious they would have run Randall Terry, Paul Weyrich, Pat Robertson, and the rest of the direct, spiritual descendents of Jim Crow right the Hell out of their Party.

If they were remotely serious, Herr Senator Doktor Frist would spit in James Dobson’s face instead of sucking his dick.

But they can’t, can they?

Run the racists off the ranch, and who would stuff all the envelopes and staff the phone banks? Write all those lovely checks and boom down from the pulpit and the chittering inbreeders, that if they vote for a Democrat, they’ll burn in Hell with the Fags and the Feminazis?

Face it, without the Segregationists, the Dominionists, the Neocon Imperialists and the rest of nutjobs that pack the extreme Right Wing of Bedlam, the GOP could no more win an election than Michael Jackson could lose a celebrity trial.

For all of their posturing, every day they become more and more nothing but the Party Of Jefferson Davis…in bad drag.