Republicans are trying to gin up an equivalence between this comment about then-Sen. Barack Obama by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid during the 2008 presidential campaign:

[Reid] was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” as he later put it privately.

…And this statement by former GOP Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott during festivities at the 100th birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond in 2002:

LOTT: “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

But there is no fair comparison between calling someone a “Negro” — the appellation preferred by African-Americans 40 years ago — and suggesting that America’s ills can be laid at the feet of uppity black people.

After his gaffe, Lott was essentially fired as majority leader by Karl Rove, who preferred the more malleable Sen. Bill Frist for the job. In the current kerfuffle, Pres. Obama personally accepted Reid’s apology. Yesterday, however, GOP Michael Steele called on Reid to resign and accused Democrats of having a double standard. Since Lott had to resign, so should Reid, Steele said. Since then, all the usual Republican suspects have rushed to the cameras to ditto the demand that Reid should go.

While it is plain silly to compare these two gaffes by majority leaders, there is a relatively recent scandal in which a Republican majority leader suffered no repercussions after he insulted a fellow congressman by calling him a “fag.” The leader was Dick Armey, who now heads Freedomworks, the outfit that astroturfed the Tea Bagger movement:

The House majority leader, Representative Dick Armey of Texas, set off a dispute on Capitol Hill today when he referred to Representative Barney Frank, one of several openly homosexual members of Congress, as “Barney Fag.”

Mr. Armey said later that he had simply mispronounced Mr. Frank’s name. First privately and then in addressing the House, he apologized to Mr. Frank for the remark, which he had made in an interview with a group of radio broadcasters.

No one believed Armey’s assertion that he’d had a slip of the tongue, including Rep. Frank:

[In] an interview with reporters after he and Mr. Armey had spoken privately, [Frank] seemed clearly upset. He said the remark reflected “a climate of meanness and intolerance with the Republicans.” While he declined to undertake a full-fledged attack in response, he also refused to wholly accept Mr. Armey’s apology.

“I don’t think it was on the tip of his tongue, but I do believe it was in the back of his mind,” Mr. Frank said. “There are a lot of ways to mispronounce my name. That is the least common.”

Armey’s name-calling occurred in January 1995, just weeks after Republicans took control of the House for the first time in 40 years — since voters tossed them out on their ears in the wake of the GOP’s communist witch hunts and other scandals. Here’s what the majority leader said:

“[House Speaker Newt Gingrich is] a very patient fellow and able to handle a harangue going on around him better than I,” Mr. Armey said. “I like peace and quiet, and I don’t have to listen to Barney Fag — Barney Frank — haranguing in my ear…”

There is a double standard here, but has nothing to do with the gaffes by Sens. Reid and Lott. What this shows is that it is okay with Republicans if one of their leaders calls a colleague a “fag,” but it is outrageous — a fireable offense — if a Democrat calls a black person a “Negro.”