Lott "I don't have to work with them (GOP) anymore, they threw me overboard!" (202) 224-6253

"He had to."

No one has to quit. He could have stuck it out until it blew over (and it would). I always felt he cut and ran too quickly. He has no right to whine about anyone 'dumping' him when he was the one that chose to leave.

I think he's already been told that by the powers that be. His current term expires in '06, BTW.

And he wants to bring the Republicans down with him on his way out. What a sweetheart of a man. Gotta love him...not.

George Allen is good, but Mitch McConnell would be much better as Majority leader.... He's much more tough in the political front (while Allen is someone who I would consider a gridiron expert, esp w/ his dad being the Redskins' coach....)

I didn't find Lott's comments about Strom Thurmond offensive, but his Democrat buddies sure turned on him and smeared him to high heavens....never mind that Robert Byrd had more segregation baggage than Thurmond. Lott deserved to be removed before he made the infamous comments, because he couldn't remember he was a Republican! He let Tom Daschle outmaneuver him on major issues. There were some who thought he was helping Democrats because his brother-in-law was active in the Mississippi Democrat Party.

Besides the infamous power-sharing deal, I seem to recall that Lott rigged the voting for majority leader in 2002. It seems to me he had the vote before the new Congress took session, so that new people couldn't vote.

At the time there was talk of replacing him, so he did some sort of finagling end run and got to retain his position. Do you remember this? A lot of us were pretty upset at the time.

Trent Lott did nothing to help the dysfunctionality of the Senate during his time in a leadership position. And the GOP is better off with Bill Frist anyway.

The Pubbies in CONgress may not have supported him, but the people elected him. He had better live up to the voters' expectations or what happened in CONgress won't much matter.

I would hope he would rise above this sort of snit and show up the RINOs on the hill for the spineless weenies they are.

It is a d@mn pity that the simpering faggots, whiners, and weenies on the left side of the aisle are showing more stones than the majority on the right.

I remember that; I'll see if I can find it, but I did find this:

Dole redux - Senate Majority Leader Trent LottRich Lowry

WHEN Majority Leader Bob Dole resigned from the Senate last year, some twenty Clinton judicial nominees were pending confirmation. Conservative groups had feared Dole would sweep them all through in a final act of bi-partisan comity, and so breathed a sigh of relief when Trent Lott took over. But during July and August Lott pushed most of the judges through, bartering them for Democratic cooperation on the other matters. At one point later in the session Lott wanted to trade the confirmation of another batch of judges for a Republican Federal Election Commission nomination, a deal that was scotched when the FEC nominee himself told Lott it was a rotten trade.

Last year's action on judges has turned out to be a harbinger: of how Lott would be bent by the same institutional forces that shaped Bob Dole, of how his pragmatism would come to the fore as Senate Majority Leader, of his cur- rent tense relations with conservatives. Lott seems a natural as Majority Leader. Says one GOP senator: "He has the potential skills of a Lyndon Johnson." But, so far, the Majority Leader with whom Trent Lott is being com- pared most often is Bob Dole -- and not always favorably. Republicans had hoped that Lott could help the party stop its headlong retreat; instead he has hastened it.

Lott spent almost all his life climbing toward Majority Leader. He grew up in circumstances similar to Bill Clinton's, in a small town in Mississippi with an alcoholic father. Lott was an achiever from early on. In high school, he was voted most popular, most likely to succeed, and most handsome (runner-up). At Ole Miss, Lott became a cheerleader, an elected position. "Running for cheerleader was electioneering practice," one retired Ole Miss professor explained to the New York Times. "To get elected, they formed political blocs with other fraternities, cut deals, and did dorm-to-dorm precinct work."

In 1968, soon after law school, Lott moved to Washington. He became an aide to Rep. William Colmer, a conservative Democrat, and when his boss retired in 1972, won his seat as a Republican. Along with Newt Gingrich, he became part of the cadre of aggressive young Republicans in the House minority, rising to Whip in 1980. In 1988 he won a Senate seat. He chafed under Dole's cautious leadership and after the 1994 election knocked off incumbent GOP Whip Alan Simpson, setting the stage for his ascension to Majority Leader last June.

In Lott's persona Felix Unger meets Katie Couric, a neat freak with the con- tagious optimism of a cheerleader. He loves charts and lists, is always well-pressed, and has the tightly controlled hair of a newscaster. But the cheerful Lott also has a prodigious ability to be one of the guys. "Watch him on the floor," says a Senate aide. "He shakes hands, points his finger, winks, squeezes a neck -- and that's just in the first two minutes." Says another: "Lott thinks, If I can touch this person, and touch that person, I'm OK -- and I'm off to the next thing." Generally he's right. But the latest questions about Lott's leadership can't be winked away.

They are questions difficult to imagine asking a year ago. Inside the Senate, the word most associated with Lott's tenure as Majority Whip is "brilliant." He had a hound's nose for trouble spots and a tight organization that reliably delivered votes. When Lott stepped in as Majority Leader last year, he thought it was imperative that he clear away the legislative tangle he inherited, pass bills, and get his Republican senators home to campaign. "He hit the ground with a whole lot of mess and backlog," says Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.), "and did a masterful job in moving forward on things."

The flurry of legislation and quick exit are generally credited with helping Senate Republicans pick up two seats. But Lott doesn't seem to have adjusted his operating principle -- do any deal -- since last year, which is raising increasing alarm about his negotiating ability and strategic sense. "I'm a great admirer of Trent's," says former Sen. Malcolm Wallop. "I'm willing to give him yards of grace in this thing, but I'm awfully worried." Inside the Senate, there has even developed a nostalgia for Bob Dole. "I don't think he realizes there's a problem," a Senate aide says of Lott. "Senators like him, they want him to succeed, but they're disturbed."

What happened? To some extent, a Senate Majority Leader is always forced to be a conciliator. But Lott also has weaknesses that had gone unnoticed. "There seems to be no long-range planning," says one GOP aide. Like Dole, Lott keeps his own counsel. He seeks advice, but no one is sure he actually listens. (Lott fusses with his fingernails when he's bored.) And he often ignores his own staff, meaning he lacks the trusted advisor Dole had in his chief of staff, Sheila Burke. The self-reliance tends to undermine Lott's discipline.

More fundamentally, Republicans may have misread Lott. "The confusion with Trent," says a GOP insider, "is that people started with an assumption that he is Right of Right-Center, when really he is Right-Center and likes passing stuff." Dick Morris -- a former Lott consultant, who kept in close touch with him in 1995-96 while working with President Clinton -- writes in his book that Lott "is a politician first and a conservative second. He sees ideology as a guideline, not as a straitjacket, and wants to pass laws, not stand true to dogma." According to Morris, Lott's "goal in the Senate is to prove that the Republican Party can govern and pass laws."

Indeed, most of Lott's year as Majority Leader has been spent proving his bi-partisan bonafides. He gave controversial Labor Secretary Alexis Herman a pass. Then he worked to pass the Chemical Weapons Convention over the opposi- tion of critics in his own party. Opponents of the CWC fear that it will pro- vide an unverifiable seal of approval to dangerous countries like China and Iran, which then can leverage the information-sharing provisions of the treaty to get access to Western technology. This year, Lott pledged to stand with treaty opponents -- sort of.

"Trent was always careful to couch what he said in a way that left him an out," says one observer. "From the very beginning his political instincts were to end up supporting it." Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, a CWC critic, agreed to bring the treaty to the floor on a condition: that Lott oppose the CWC unless protections Helms had added -- against things like tech- nology transfer -- stayed in the treaty. In the end, they were all stripped out -- but Lott voted for the CWC and delivered the votes for its ratification anyway.

Lott got cover from a White House letter vowing to withdraw from the treaty if it becomes a threat to the United States. A carefully hedged, non-binding fig leaf, the letter was nonetheless hailed by Lott as a major breakthrough that made the Helms pro-tections unnecessary. Lott pressed the letter on fellow senators the morning of the CWC vote. Later in the day, he officially abandoned his neutral pose on the CWC and brought eight or so swing votes with him. "We felt we couldn't afford to let Lott lose," explains a GOP senator. "It would just unravel our leadership in the Senate."

"For Lott," says a GOP aide, "the CWC was never more than a bargaining chip." The Majority Leader told the Washington Post after the vote that it was now up to the President to "show similar courage against his base." Roughly a week later, a budget deal was announced, but with little quid to balance the pro quo. "If he got anything for his sellout on the CWC," says a Senate aide, "Lord knows what it is."

"None of us," says Sen. Slade Gorton (R., Wash.), who is close to Lott, "not Trent, not Domenici, not me, not any of the rest, is a great enthusiast for this agreement." But that didn't stop Lott from saying, the day the deal was announced, that "because of what we do here today, this country can look for- ward to an era of prosperity," that the budget will be "revolutionary in the individual lives of the American people," etc. A Senate aide says of the leadership, "they built a euphoria that sucked people in before they knew the details. There's nobody who's happy about this. There's nobody who doesn't think Lott was taken to the cleaners."

"It's clear to me," says budget critic Phil Gramm (R., Tex.), "that the Presi- dent was a lot more focused on policy than we were, and as a result the deal gets progressively better for them and worse for us." In early briefings to fellow Republicans, Lott seemed evasive on key policy questions. He wouldn't answer whether he had agreed to $35 billion for Clinton education credit over five years or ten. In the fluid days after the agreement, the Administration quickly established that the $35 billion was indeed for five years -- a number that cuts deep into GOP tax cuts.

The current challenge for Lott is to prevent even further erosion of GOP priorities. No sooner had he secured the pledge of the Democratic leadership to vote against all amendments that would break the budget agreement, than Tom Daschle was announcing his support of the Hatch-Kennedy amendment to add a $30 billion cigarette tax. "Lott is wearing a kick-me sign," complains one GOP aide. Lott managed to get the White House to provide half-hearted opposition to Hatch-Kennedy. "It was not an impressive performance [by the White House]," Gorton says dryly.

Lott has often been reluctant to face down Democratic challenges, partly as a matter of temperament. The orderly Lott wants the Senate to run smoothly. That means giving in to Democratic demands in order to avoid nasty spats and late-night sessions. He has been reluctant to have Republicans "second-degree" Democratic political amendments -- i.e., bump them with political amendments of their own -- for fear that the Democrats will offer their amendments again and again. It means Democrats often play pure politics unchecked. "It's as if they have a God-given right to torture us on the Senate floor," says one GOP staffer.

But Lott's deal-making and cooperation are also dictated by a larger political idea: that bi-partisan accomplishments offer the best hope for Republicans to enlarge their majorities in the House and Senate. For Lott, governance -- like his life -- is about achievement; he wants the congressional GOP to be voted the party most likely to succeed. This means a centrist politics of blurred differences of the sort advocated, in varying forms, by his two controversial consultants, Dick Morris and Frank Luntz (Lott recently has distanced himself from both).

With a number of vulnerable Democratic seats opening up in 1998 --in South Carolina, Kentucky, and Ohio among others -- the GOP may make Senate gains even running on a undistinguished, centrist program. But there are risks. As Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), head of the Senatorial Campaign Committee, has warned his colleagues, without a set of cutting partisan issues it will be difficult to motivate Republican base voters in 1998. And it's turnout that makes the crucial differences in off-year elections. Much of Lott's action this year has served either to demoralize the base of the party or, in the case of his defense of Kelly Flinn, positively to enrage it.

Senate conservatives hope recent criticism from the Right will make Lott warier of offending conservatives. It may well do the opposite. Lott recently stripped harsh critic Paul Weyrich of a privilege that made it easier for the activist, recovering from a back injury, to make it around the U.S. Capitol. Lott doesn't take criticism well. GOP operative Ed Rogers, a close Lott con- fidant, lashes out at the Majority Leader's critics. Of a recent George Will column shredding Lott's Flinn comments, Rogers says: "Where does he get off writing that article? That was written by an enemy, not a critic." Rogers refers to conservatives as "they": "They don't have an agenda, nor do they have a clear sense of reality in dealing with Bill Clinton."

Lott's Majority Leadership is still a work in progress, but early indications are that it will be a reprise of the days of Bob Dole, when a legislative tac- tician with a taste for deal-making and cool relations with the GOP's grass-roots muddled from one compromise to the next. If Lott succeeds in solidifying the GOP hold on Congress on his current model, it will be as a status-quo congressional party in the tradition of the Democrats in the 1980s. That would bring a stop to Lott's career climb. "I already think his presiden- tial hopes have been flushed down the toilet," says one GOP insider. And it would only serve to heighten the party's identity crisis. Lott's leadership apparently owes something to his Ole Miss cheer: "Hotty toddy, gosh almighty, who in the hell are we?"

Trent Lott: Freed from the constraints of leadership

By Paul M. Weyrich
web posted June 2, 2003

Back when I came to Washington in January of 1967, being a
conservative on Capitol Hill was a fairly lonely experience. Here
and there, I would encounter a fellow staffer with like-minded
views in the offices of a conservative Republican Senator
(although in many cases their staffs were as liberal as could be)
or, quite often, in the offices of a Southern Democrat Senator.

A journalist friend arranged to have me invited to a monthly
dinner hosted by a retired general who had been a Washington,
D.C. commissioner back when the District was run by a three
man commission. There I met some fellow Republican Senate
staffers who worked just a few doors away from the offices of
the late Senator Gordon Allott (R-CO) for whom I worked.
And there were some conservative Democrats as well. One of
them was an assistant to Rep. Bill Colmer of Mississippi, the
chairman of the then -powerful Rules Committee. His name was
Trent Lott. He was sharp and articulate and absolutely solid on
the issues.

We began to work together on some issues of mutual concern
and by 1970 I had introduced him to a young speechwriter who
also worked for Senator Allott. His name was George Will.
Along with Walter Mote, who was then Administrative Assistant
to the late Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, Will and Lott and I
formed the Conservative Lunch Club of Capitol Hill. I well recall
the first meeting because I had to rush back from a bill signing in
the Oval Office with then-President Richard Nixon. Nixon was
unusually chatty and I ended up being late to my own lunch.

But we were thrilled with the turnout for that luncheon. Sixty Hill
staffers attended. Each month for the next three years we
produced a major program. Will and I used our connections in
the Senate, Mote with the Administration, and Lott in the House.
We had hit after hit. In the process, I got to know Lott better
and better. Lott and I, along a half-dozen others, took a fact-
finding trip (a.k.a junket) in January of 1972 to Taiwan and
Hong Kong and Japan. Ed Feulner, who then was chief of staff
to Rep. Phil Crane (R-IL) and who now is president of the
Heritage Foundation, and I visited with Lott for hours on that
long trip. Mr. Colmer was preparing to retire and Lott intended
to run to take his place.

Lott shocked us by telling us that he thought he would run as a
Republican! We tried to talk him out of that since Mississippi
had only elected one Republican to Congress in all the years
since Reconstruction. But he sensed a change coming in the
South and indeed he was elected as a Republican in 1972. Just
eight years later, when Ronald Reagan was elected president and
Republicans greatly increased their numbers in the House, Lott
was elected Whip, the number two post in the GOP's House
leadership, right after the post of Minority Leader. We would
talk often. He still professed the same principles as always but he
said that then-Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-IL) didn't want to
rock the boat so he couldn't accomplish what we both believed
in.

Frustrated with operating under Michel, unable to see when
Michel would retire, and clearly unable to see a time when
Republicans would control the House, Lott ran and won a
Senate seat in 1988.

Soon Lott was in a small leadership post but it was a good
steppingstone for him to challenge then - Republican Whip Sen.
Alan Simpson (R-WY), who had angered conservatives on a
variety of fronts. Lott defeated Simpson by one vote.

It is highly unusual for Republicans to turn out an incumbent
leader, so Lott began his work in the leadership with a great deal
of prestige. Lott continued to attend the Steering Committee
lunches, the caucus of conservative Senators. He said all the right
things, but once again was hemmed in by then-Republican
Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS). Just a few months later
Dole resigned to run for president. Lott was challenged for
Majority Leader by the senior Senator from Mississippi, Thad
Cochran. Cochran received only eight votes out of 55 Senators
voting. Our friend Trent Lott was at last Majority Leader. He
had the strongest mandate any leader has had in recent memory.
Howard Baker became Republican leader by a single vote, for
example.

We expected great things from Lott. But from that day forward
until he was unfairly forced from office early this year, our friend
was a constant disappointment. He did not advance conservative
principles. He was ever so cautious that very little was
accomplished under his watch. The problem, it seems, is that
Lott now viewed all 55 Senators as his constituents. Those
included the likes of Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Olympia
Snowe (R-ME). He was constantly trying to reconcile all sides.
Frequently that was impossible. It left him more frustrated then
when he was constrained by Bob Michel and Bob Dole.

While he did keep the Republican caucus reasonably happy in
that there were few fights (except for the Chemical Weapons
Convention when he backed President Clinton and split his
colleagues right down the middle), he did not emerge as the
strong, principled leader we always knew him to be. That was
perhaps my greatest disappointment in 45 years of political life.

As readers of this column know I defended Lott over the
Thurmond flap. He was just trying to make an old man feel good
on his 100th birthday. Still and all, I believe this story has a
happy ending. Bill Frist is turning out to be a good leader. Lott is
now Chairman of the Senate Rules Committee. There is a certain
irony to that development in that he began his political life in
Washington working for the Chairman of the House Rules
Committee.

Freed of his obligation (from his perspective) to please everyone
and to reconcile that which cannot be reconciled, Lott is
emerging as his old self again. He is advocating the radical
solution for ending the filibuster by the Democrats against the
President's judicial nominees that I wrote about last month.

Lott told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger regarding that solution to
the filibuster "I am perfectly prepared to blow the [Senate] up.
No problem. What good are we doing anyway?"

Senator Snowe and many of his critics over the Thurmond affair
acknowledge that Lott has handled himself with extraordinary
grace and without bitterness since he was forced to resign as
leader. "He has done an admirable job making what would be a
very difficult transition for anyone" Snowe told the Clarion-
Ledger.

Even though Bush pulled the rug out from under Lott during the
Thurmond flap, Lott is helping Bush however he can. "It's not
about me," Lott said.

He called the Senate passed tax bill "a piece of junk" and said
Senators ought to crawl on their hand and knees to beg the
House to pass their bill through the conference committee. That
is the old Trent we knew and loved. Thanks to the Republican
Study Committee in the House, which Lott helped to form in
1973, the conference committee emerged with the best
compromise possible.

Lott has retained his sense of humor. A group in his home state
wanted to roast him for a fundraising event. He told them that
might not be a good idea because "you can't roast toast."

Lott will never be leader again and yet in his new position it is
entirely possible that he will at last be able to put forth those
conservative principles which made him such a solid friend as we
battled the wars in those early and lonely days.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress
Foundation (www.freecongress.org).

I'm free. I don't have to work with them anymore."

Translation: The democrats have the negatives of me with members of the opposite sex when I was a cheerleader and the GOP doesn't.

He's a has been blow hard who can't find his way out of a paper bag. As Majority Leader he would always lay down for the demoncrats as long as they scratched his belly. What a complete POS!!

I am probably the only guy on FR who once tried to type an A with his nose because I was trying to hold a BLT together.

You must be a black-belt Freeper.

Because he's a complete ignoramus who can't find his way out of a paper bag. He sucked as Majority Leader because he thought and still thinks that the senate is some kind of private country club. DO THE PEOPLES WORK SENATOR LOTT YOU COMPLETE JACKASS!!

Sounds like Lott is suffering from the same dementia as Jeffords and Leahy. We need term limits.

He wants his old job back, and he wants to see the look on the faces of people like President Bush and Sen. George Allen when he gets it back."

Trent Lott is delusional if he thinks he's got a snowball's chance in hell of becoming Majority Leader again... Geeze!

Thanks for the gaggy pictures which remind us how lucky we are that one of the biggest democrat butt sniffing senators is not running the show anymore.

the pubbies did nothing to help him in his time of need

It's hard to help those....who won't help themselves.

BY The way, this was from "Powerline" but we can't post from "blogs"...This is not my reporting, but Powerline's!

Yes, we can, in the Bloggers forum. Prepare for transfer...

Per Powerline: A Tony Snow exclusive

Tony Snow just finished an interview with Trent Lott. Senator Lott wanted to respond to an article in Roll Call to the effect that he had crafted a deal to dump certain judges to guarantee others an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. According to an account (I didn't hear the interview), Lott called the report "exaggerated," adding that he has worked with Ben Nelson "from time to time" on a deal, but that the proposed deal "isn't much of a deal at all." Lott also stated that he won't accept criticism from Republicans for working with Democratic senators because "they're the same ones who threw me overboard. I'm free. I don't have to work with them anymore." Lott called the Senate a "dysfunctional institution." Lott may consider himself part of the solution to this problem, but in the context of the confirmation battles that remains to be seen.

The show will be replayed starting at noon (eastern time) and I'm told that audio highlights will be posted on Tony's website a an hour or so later.

What a whining RINO! If Lott had his way, he would turn the leadership of the senate over to the RATs right now -- oh, wait, he and the other RINOs have done just that!

Putting his hurt feelings above what's good for the counrty!
Good post. Seems to be a lot of that going on lately.