Transcript: The Rachel Maddow Show (1-11-10)

Complete Rachel Maddow transcript for 1-11-10 here:

MADDOW: Republicans are not moving forward on this. They have seized on Senator Reid`s comments. They`re demanding that he resign, saying Mr. Reid should step down because former Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott resigned back in 2002, after Mr. Lott said that the nation would have avoided decades of problems if only we`d elected Strom Thurman when he ran for president on a segregationist platform in the `40s.

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THEN-SEN. TRENT LOTT (R-MS), MAJORITY LEADER: When Strom Thurman ran for president, we voted for him. We`re proud of it.

(APPLAUSE)

LOTT: And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn`t have had all these problems over all these years, either.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Substantively, what Mr. Lott said and what Mr. Reid said are different. I mean, they`re both obviously embarrassing, but Trent Lott was saying the country would have been better off if we had a segregationist president. Harry Reid was reflecting on the political viability of a black candidate today describing the limits that racism puts on electability. There`s a big difference between the content of the two comments.

Now, Mr. Reid did use language in making his point that if not racist was at least super awkwardly and antiquatedly racial.

Leading the charge against Senator Reid and in the wake of these embarrassing comments has been Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL STEELE, RNC CHAIRMAN: It`s inappropriate-- absolutely. So if the standard is the one we saw with Trent Lott as speaker -- as leader at the time, then I think this absolutely falls in that category.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: It is, of course, awkward right now to have Michael Steele be the man out front making the case that someone should resign for using racially insensitive language.

Maybe Republicans could have picked someone other than Mr. Steele given Mr. Steele`s own recent.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEELE: Our platform is one of the best political documents that`s been written in the last 25 years. Honest Injun on that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Honest Injun.

Does the fact that Michael Steele recently made a really racially insensitive remark on television mean that he can`t be offended by somebody else`s other racially insensitive remark? Of course, it doesn`t mean that. But it does highlight the complications here. It highlights that a politician or a public figure using really inappropriate language about race is not exactly a rare occurrence these days.

And the consequences for people when something like this happens in public, the consequences are all over the map. For example, remember this one?

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FORMER GOV. GEORGE ALLEN (R), VIRGINIA: This fellow over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is, he`s with my opponent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: The Macaca moment. That was former Republican governor of Virginia George Allen. That single Macaca moment pretty much doomed his run for a Virginia Senate seat and any future political aspirations he might have had.

Then there was former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, waxing ineloquent about the Spanish language back in 2007.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FMR. REP. NEWT GINGRICH (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country, and so they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.