*GOING, GOING . . .: On the evening of December 19, as we approached press time for this issue of HUMAN EVENTS, support for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R.-Miss.) was rapidly collapsing inside the Senate Republican Conference. Early in the day, the buzz around Washington was that producers for the nightly cable talk shows could find no Republican senators willing to appear that evening to defend Lott. Later, conservative stalwart Sen. Jim Inhofe (R.-Okla.) said Lott’s "ability as a leader dissipates on a daily basis." Inhofe cited as an example Lott’s apology earlier in the week for voting against a federal holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr.-a vote Inhofe believes reflected a responsible conservative position.
*FRIST INTO FRAY: By late afternoon, Sen. Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.) had publicly announced he was willing to challenge Lott for his post, saying he had been encouraged to do so by other senators-and he quickly picked up the support of a number of senators, including Inhofe, George Allen (Va.) and Don Nickles (Okla.). Frist, it should be noted, had first shown up on the radar screen as a potential replacement for Lott when the Washington Post reported that White House political advisor Karl Rove wanted to see him in that position. Many conservatives would rather see Sen. Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.), whom they view as more dependable and feistier than Frist, but at press time McConnell, rather than running himself, was still trying to round up support for Lott, as was Rick Santorum (Pa.).
*FRIST AND HCA: It is not clear if Frist’s colleagues have carefully examined the political and ethical ramifications of his relationship with HCA, the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain. HCA, founded by Frist’s father and brother, reportedly performs abortions in some of its hospitals. As of January 2001, Frist owned between $5 million and $25 million in HCA stock in a "blind" trust, which has not divested of the stock. The question of Frist’s relationship with HCA is compounded by his contradictory statements on abortion over the years and his unwillingness to provide HUMAN EVENTS with direct answers to direct questions about the issue. (See story on page 4.)
*FLOUNDERING LEFT: Lott, unable to defend himself coherently in five different public apologies and abandoned by many conservatives and neoconservatives who should have been making his case for him, has been lurching to the left, thinking that would save him. As Abigail Thernstrom, a Republican member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, wrote in an op-ed piece in the New York Times last week, "On BET, Mr. Lott was defensive about receiving an F on the latest NAACP congressional report card, saying that that ‘I have been changing.’ Yet this report grades politicians on such partisan, non-civil rights matters as their votes on extending unemployment benefits to aviation workers and increasing global AIDS financing. Not surprisingly, every Senate Republican received an F-even moderates like Lincoln Chafee and Olympia Snowe. Mr. Lott can aim for a better mark, but he won’t get one, not as a Republican."
Lott, said Thernstrom, instead of ceding GOP leadership on civil rights, should have challenged "the mainstream civil rights establishment" by promoting a counter-agenda. Earlier, on ABC News, she had spelled out what she has in mind. "I would put at the top of my agenda, for instance, school choice, letting kids out of, inner-city kids out of schools that are really failing them and I think cannot turn around given the role of the teacher’s unions which are very closely tied to the Democratic Party and so forth. But, you know, we all [know], there is a Republican civil rights agenda. It needs to be articulated and I’m not sure why the Republicans from the Senate. . .do not feel that as strongly as I do."
*PICKERING PUSHED OUT? One prominent victim of the flap over Lott’s remarks appears to be U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering. Even though Republicans now control the Senate, the Mississippi jurist-despite his strong record on civil rights and the support he has gotten from the state NAACP and other black organizations-will not be renominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals because of his identification as "Lott’s boy." Earlier, both the White House and Senate Republicans thought they could undo the Democrats’ knifing of Pickering’s nomination in the Judiciary Committee earlier this year. Now they fear an unwelcome rehashing of Lott’s statement if Pickering’s name is sent back.
*LEE ON LOTT: In one of the more measured responses to the Trent Lott affair, filmmaker Spike Lee had this to say to the New York Daily News: "The man’s a card-carrying member of the Klan. He’s got to go. The Klan’s got to go. There’s no place for the Klan in the Senate. Tell him to throw the hood and robe away."
*AFTER DASCHLE? As the belief grows that Tom Daschle might well resign as Senate Democratic leader to launch an ’ 04 presidential bid, two colleagues last week began making calls to signal their availability to succeed the South Dakotan: Democratic Whip Harry Reid (Nev.), who holds the No. 2 slot in the minority leadership, and Christopher Dodd (Conn.), who lost the leadership post to Daschle by one vote in 1994. Betting favorite is Dodd, a past Democratic National Chairman who holds a safe seat, over Reid, survivor of the third-closest Senate race in history in 1998.
*TO THE D.C. BENCH: The White House has decided to fill two long-vacant judgeships on the D.C. Court of Appeals and speculation is focused on two top Justice Department officials as prospective nominees: Criminal Division head Michael Chertoff and Acting Associate Deputy Atty. Gen. Peter Keisler, whose nomination to a U.S. appellate judgeship in Maryland died last year because of the refusal of Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D.-Md.) to sign off on him. The White House desire to fill the slots on the panel often dubbed the "second highest court in the land" comes despite years of complaints by Senate Republicans that its ten present judges are underworked. "Anything more than ten is a waste of government resources," insisted Laurence Silberman, himself a senior judge on the D.C. Court.
