Word: lotte
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...incident involved Welch's longtime ally Lamar Alexander. To begin with, John McCain failed to support Alexander's November bid for Senate minority whip against Mississippi's Trent Lott. And then, Welch complains, McCain "went and convinced two other people to change their votes. I thought that was egregious." The McCain camp acknowledges recruiting on Lott's behalf. In the end, Alexander lost by one vote...
...would Senate Republicans choose the controversial Lott after an electoral drubbing that saw them lose, among other things, the hard-fought progress they had made with nonwhite voters, especially African Americans? And why pick someone who is known to have an ax to grind with the White House at a time when the party should regroup and unify...
...answer is that Lott won (by one vote over Tennessee's Lamar Alexander) because he spent the past four years quietly making himself as useful as possible to his colleagues. He lent his old strengths as a backroom dealmaker and a master of arcane Senate rules to sometimes thankless tasks. He not only won back allies that way, but he also sharpened the exact skills that his party will need for the next two years, when its main goal will be to stop Democratic bills from seeing the light of day, let alone the President's desk. As the whip...
...Congress, with every Republican Senator seemingly running for re-election or for President, proof of one's independence from the White House will be an asset, not a liability, especially if Bush's approval ratings remain mired in the mid-30s. As he was campaigning for the whip job, Lott says, he told his colleagues that when it came to White House pressure, "there's nothing they can do to me or for me that they haven't already done. I'm not mad, but I am a little bit of a liberated guy these days...
...Democrats are the ones who should fear Lott the most: they are desperate to pass bills that will show voters they can govern. That might explain why some of them are already trying to reach across the aisle to him. While Mel Watt of the House Congressional Black Caucus released a statement after Lott's election saying, "The sting of Trent Lott's hurtful words are unlikely to expire anytime soon," Barack Obama, the freshman Senator from Illinois, seemed not to carry a grudge as he left the Senate floor the day after Lott's victory. "[Lott] obviously paid...