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Doug,
Stay with your first impulse. There IS a way out of this that neatly solves everything (or at least minimizes the damage already done). But it requires Lott to stop being selfish and take one for the team. STAY in the Senate, but resign as Majority Leader.

Here's a post from a link provided by National Review Online's "The Corner" section.

ME, TOO! I have nothing original to say about Trent Lott, but I thought I'd pass along something that my friend and former colleague Dan Polsby posted to a discussion list (and kindly agreed to let me repost):

Is it not curious and wonderful that Sen. Lott seems unable to see what everyone else can see about his predicament? Here he is, hunkered down in his regulation Beltway duck-and-cover position, thinking of firestorms past and how people have survived them. It's all about him. The welfare or interests of other people who depend on the leader of a political party, and how he might best serve them, have never evidently crossed Sen. Lott's mind since this business began -- if ever. The latest bleat seems to be: those Democrats, that Jesse Jackson, they have unclean hands and double standards. In other words: if they can have double standards, so can we. Fooey.

There is something the matter with this guy. The same thing is the matter with many of them. Not racism -- solipsism. The "it's all about me-ness" of the world. This is the sort of person who steps up to the plate when offices and dignities are being passed around. They have to be controlled. Madison was a genius.

Good point. The question for Lott is what he thinks he can do outside the Senate. If he thinks there is a cushy lobbying job waiting, he should think again. I think the administration could make clear that if Lott resigns the senate, any lobbying he does will insure the defeat of the bill he lobbies for. That he is poison. That any company he goes to work for will get audited by the IRS, etc.