Publius' Forum

-By Warner Todd Huston
Will Trent Lott be as much a disaster for the GOP in the role of Minority Whip as he was the LAST time when he was in a position of power?(as Majority Leader in 2002)

It remains to be seen, but a bad sign is all the praise from "colleagues" Lott has gotten with his phoenix like rise back to a position of importance in the Senate. Both sides of the aisle have been clapping him on the back for his resurgence.

On the surface of it, I'd say it is all a bad sign. If the Democrats think this is a good move for the GOP, it probably ISN'T.

It must be remembered that, as Majority Leader, Lott distressingly gave away power to the enemy party repeatedly. He constantly allowed the Democrats to influence committees even though it was the GOP's first chance to push through policy for decades. He also constantly stymied the White House and the President who was purportedly in his own party.

Then, he turned a simple birthday party into an excuse for the left to rekindle the claim that all Republicans are racists.

Lott may know the "arcane rules" of the Senate, but he has an axe to grind against president Bush (whom he OBVIOUSLY didn't support even BEFORE Lott's stupid birthday comment), and he was just short of a collaborator with Democrats giving them all kinds of support when he was Majority Leader.

This having an axe to grind against Bush is the worst of all signs, even worse than his constant bending over for the Democrats that he did in 2002.

The Revival of Trent Lott

Hello, Mr. President. This is Lazarus speaking." That is how Trent Lott answered a phone call last week from George W. Bush, the man who helped force him out of the Senate's top job in 2002 after Lott praised Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential campaign. Maybe Lott is selling himself short. After all, Lazarus was in the tomb for only four days, but it took Lott, 65, four years to mount the improbable comeback that culminated in his election last Wednesday as minority whip, the second most powerful G.O.P. position in the Senate. But if Bush, who called from Air Force One en route to Singapore, was spooked by the Mississippi Senator's resurrection, he did his best to hide it. Lott says Bush laughed off the Lazarus analogy and said, "Well, we're looking forward to working with you."

Yeah, nice!

ALL we need is a guy who hates his own president and one who helps Democrats as often as he does his own Party to become our Minority Whip! Why not just invite Lincoln Chafee back into the Senate, at that rate? As if the GOP isn't in trouble enough as it is?

The good word about Lott is his thoroughgoing knowledge of the Senate's rules. OK, all fine and dandy. But if he uses those rules to sound "reasonable"... and by "reasonable" I mean to give Democrats every benefit of the doubt and every opportunity to get THEIR way... then we are doomed.

And, need we remind anyone that Lott was a Democrat until he switched parties, anyway? Obviously he has an affinity for them with all the "sharing" of power he allowed them in 2002!

I am going to say right now that Lott will be a disaster for a party that has made disaster its middle name.

In the House, Conservative candidates for Minority leader and Whip Mike Pence and John Shadegg lost to John Boehner and Roy Blunt, neither of which are considered entirely conservative – not to mention that they are tied to old leadership and NOT new faces. It seems the House decided that the lesson from the elections is that left leaning Republicans are the future of the Party.

So, what I am saying here is that Conservatives should expect Congress to be a wasteland for conservative policy for the foreseeable future.