From Ramesh Ponnuru January 11 post to his Washington Post Right Matters blog, headlined “Harry Reid and Trent Lott: There's No Comparison”:

Republicans and conservatives are comparing Harry Reid's comment about “Negro dialect” to Trent Lott's remark about how we would have avoided a lot of problems if Strom Thurmond had been elected. Just as Republicans turned on Lott and forced him to give up the Senate majority leadership, they say, so Democrats should turn on Reid and make him resign his post.

But the comparison is off the mark. Lott's comment implied that the country would have been better off keeping segregation and enforced white supremacy. What Reid said isn't within a lightyear of that.