Lott:
The strange crisis of Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott (Miss.) has ramifications for the GOP beyond the Senate. It is given as a certainty in Washington that he will not get through this-but actually, he still might have a chance for survival.
How did Lott reach this critical state of affairs?
1) The undeniable fact is that nobody at first paid much attention to Lott’s good-natured kidding of Sen. Strom Thurmond (R.-S.C.) on his hundredth birthday party December 5. Lott had many times greeted the old man with a jocular wish that his segregationist States Rights Democratic candidacy for president had won in 1948. Lott’s blunder was in turning a private joke into a public joke.
2) Reporters covering the birthday party did not perceive a big story. Not until the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Congressional Black Caucus played the race card was Lott in trouble. The Washington news media, which never have been that friendly with Lott, picked up the scent of the cornered fox in a period short of hard news.
3) Even so, Lott would have escaped with his majority leadership had his supposed conservative base stuck with him. It did not-at least not the Washington-New York establishment. Lott has not been a popular leader with conservatives outside Congress, and they turned against him. The worst came when President George W. Bush criticized Lott without praising his service. That is when Lott realized that he was in serious trouble. For the past week, the conventional wisdom among conservatives is that Lott is dead.
4) But the decision is in the hands of 51 Republican senators, and most of them have kept quiet. The only one to flatly call for Lott’s replacement has been Sen. Don Nickles (Okla.). Sens. John Warner (Va.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) have questioned Lott’s viability but not joined Nickles. There is strong support from key Republicans in the leadership: Sens. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Rick Santorum (Pa.).
5) Lott, who at first understandably did not take the situation seriously, has engaged in an apology tour-culminating in his Black Entertainment Television (BET) interview Monday night. This was a classic Catch-22, where Republicans who had been browbeating Lott for being a segregationist attacked him for selling out on the BET by advocating "affirmative action."
6) Veteran civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis (D.-Ga.), one of the most respected members of the Congressional Black Caucus, is willing to take Lott’s apologies at face value. But few others take that position.
What happens next?
1) The notion promoted by the media that the scheduled Jan. 6 caucus will have a referendum on Lott as Majority Leader is unrealistic. If there is a majority in favor of a new election, that means they don’t want another term by Lott. Thus, Lott definitely would not be a candidate in a new election.
2) Will there be an actual vote in the caucus on whether to hold a new election and, therefore, dump Lott? Probably not. The question of whether Lott will go or stay is more likely to be worked out by feel and consensus in the coming weeks.
3) If Lott is dumped, it is highly unlikely that Nickles will succeed him. One member of the Senate GOP leadership (not Lott) called Nickles’ public attack on Lott "a suicide note." That Nickles abandoned hopes of challenging Lott for re-election last month reflected his lack of popularity among his Senate Republican colleagues.
4) The most likely candidates would be Sens. Bill Frist (Tenn.), McConnell and Santorum. The White House would prefer Frist, but help from that quarter is not entirely a plus in internal Senate elections.
5) If Lott is bumped from the leadership, he could resign from the Senate, which would result in Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove’s (D.) naming a Democrat to succeed him-changing the Senate partisan ratio to an unstable 50-50 (counting independent Sen. Jim Jeffords [Vt.] as a Democrat). Friends say Lott never would do that, but nobody can be sure.
What are the political consequences of this affair?
1) The Republican momentum following the mid-term elections unquestionably has been slowed. It is a moot point whether this could have been avoided had Lott’s Republican colleagues and President Bush supported him the last two weeks.
2) Republicans outside the Senate argue that Lott as Majority Leader would be a terrible impediment, both in passing the Bush program and in the 2004 elections.
3) The other side of the coin: Will the lack of support for Trent Lott come back to haunt the GOP as a party not worthy of loyalty?
