IT WAS EASY for Republicans to curse Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott when his only apparent sin was praising Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist run for the White House.
The Party of Lincoln has become quite good at distancing itself from the kind of outright bigotry and race-baiting that Republicans used to win Southern hearts and minds during the contentious struggle for civil rights in the 1960s.
But the more the focus of Mr. Lott's trouble moves away from his apparently nostalgic comments and toward his record as a reflection of Republican ideals, the more he becomes a difficult figure for his party to confront.
That's because his record, though stark, isn't all that different from those of the Republicans who are now criticizing him: Senator Lott has opposed affirmative action, fair-housing initiatives and voting rights for minorities and even the commemoration of the Rev. Martin Luther King's birthday - but then, so have most people in the party.
What gets Republicans by is the insistence that their agenda isn't really about race, but is grounded in a respect for the free market and desire for less government.
And when they do appeal to racial passions, they do it in code that makes it easy to deny any true bigotry.
Their leaders claim to recognize the need to recruit people of color, but in the clinch they have not hesitated to exploit the fear or hatred festering just beneath the politically correct veneer: Ronald Reagan talked about welfare queens. George H.W. Bush's campaign used Willie Horton to sack Michael Dukakis in 1988. Even current President George W. Bush, who campaigned on a message of inclusion, nonetheless made the ritual visit to South Carolina's Bob Jones University, which bans interracial dating.
Mr. Lott's slip-up violated that code and held up a mirror to the GOP's fractured identity. And now the seemingly endless dissection of his record is turning into an unflattering reminder of the very real link between the modern Republican Party and its bigoted past.
The truth is that the Republican Party has for decades provided a comfortable home for the intolerant because it hasn't put a priority on making sure racist vestiges of the past are eliminated.
Replacing Trent Lott won't fix that. But a genuine return to its Lincoln-era roots could earn the GOP a lot of credit with Americans of all races.