Trent and Mitch
As you’ve no doubt heard, Trent Lott will announce that he has decided to spend more time with his K Street friends.
Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott(R-Miss.) is planning on resigning from the Senate this year and maymake a formal announcement as soon as today.
If he resigns, Lottwould become the sixth Republican senator to announce they werestepping down this election cycle. His term expires in 2012; and aresignation would prompt a special election to fill the remainder ofhis term. Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) would be tasked with appointinga replacement for Lott to serve before the special election is held.
I’m glad to see Trent go (though Haley Barbour is bound to appoint someone just as awful to replace him). But I’m most intrigued by what Trent’s departure will do to Senate leadership. After all, the Republicans have actually done better in the minority than they were doing in the majority. That’s partly because Republicans just better at obnoxiously obstructing legislation than actually governing. But it’s also because Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott are masters of parliamentary procedures. So switching Bill Frist, in the majority, for McConnell and Lott, in the minority, was a significant step up for the Republicans.
Well, the Republicans may lose Lott imminently, and McConnell is facing a surprisingly tough re-election campaign in KY.
I’ve long said that I could be happy with any of the top three Democratic candidates for President, but that we’d really be much better off with five more Senate seats in Democratic hands. Imagine how much more fun we’d have–if we got those five seats–without Mitch and Trent to muck things up in the Senate.
Update: Chris Bowers has the best analysis of Trent’s fork in our eye I’ve seen yet.
I detest Lott, but I really really detest McConnell, and so the only negative I see is giving Mitch the entire leadership. But my real question is: does this explanation really hold water? He’s still got many years to run up the tab, as it were, for his K-Street associates. Every year he is in control he accumulates more favors that translate into money when he leaves the Senate. My uninformed guess would be that even with new lobbying restrictions, if he stayed he could still make out better. Is there a chance he’s being caught up in an investigation?
â€Haley Barbour is bound to appoint someone just as awful to replace himâ€
Truth is that there is not anyone less awful than him in the Mississippi Republican Party. Always remember exactly who these people are: unreformed segregationsists and economic elitists.
Mark C, Have you seen NOW on PBS this week? Last night’s program was “Oil, Politics & Bribes†and had a photo of Lott with others like Denny Hastert and Larry Craig on a fishing trip with the owners of Veco. There is a link to photos from an earlier NPR Marketplace program on the same topic. So maybe some implications in that investigation?
Links: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/347/index.html and http://marketplace.publicradio…..n_fishing/
Yet another of example of our elected officials being so corrupt, they don’t even both to hide it any more. Of course the best part of this is that now rather than having our tax dollars paying Trent’s salary directly, they will be paying his much larger salary indirectly, after those dollars taken a spin through the federal-corporate laundro-mat.
EW, fwiw, I agree the Rethugs have been very effective with their parliamentary maneuvers in the minority, but I think a large part of their success has been due to the majority’s reluctance to effectively use their power to stand up to the Rethug agenda. Until the Dems do exert their power, I don’t think it matters whether Lott and McConnell are in the minority leadership or not. Although, I am curious, to what extent they are responsible for keeping the Rethugs in Congress in line in terms of their voting along party lines. I suspect if there are any significant changes after Lott goes, it will be more Rethugs breaking ranks with votes that make themselves look better to their constituents in an election year.
At least Lott didn’t stay around forever like Thurmond did, he looked like Lenin’s corpse most of the time during his final term. Lott spent a lot of time and effort â€rehabilitating†himself back to a position of power after being deposed in favour of Frist when he was said what he really thought for once – it must speak volumes to the fears among the Republicans of the outcome of the upcoming election that they are fleeing to spend more time with the â€family†on K Street.
â€Truth is that there is not anyone less awful than him in the Mississippi Republican Party.â€
I agree, but imvho Trent is a â€refined†white supremacist and those do a lot more damage. Appointing one who is less refined, may make it slightly less easy to vote Republican in Mississippi.
Also, Trent’s K street buddies won’t be nearly as excited to see him, now that he no longer holds office. I keep hoping that there’s something more behind this.
Via Atrios: Coincidence?
Larry Flynt, editor and publisher of Hustler magazine, just told FOX Business Network’s Neil Cavuto that he’s “hoping to expose a bombshell†that will stand “Washington and the country on its head.†Within the next week or two, he says his magazine will expose a sex scandal of huge proportions involving a prominent United States Senator. Flynt refused to comment on the Senator’s political affiliation, but alluded that he or she is a Republican.
Ishmael – Interesting bit on Flynt. I dunno, but color me skeptical that Lott’s decision to retire is unprovoked. He is a pretty measured guy. Seems unlikely he would have run for re-election just two years ago, and successfully reestablished himself in the leadership just to step down. If the Flynt bit is indeed it, I wonder which of the Edwin Edwards options it is; dead girl or live boy?
bmaz, how ’bout both? BTW watched the Cards game yesterday, I see why you’re a Sun Devils fan
rxbusa – so maybe he just wants time to oversee the reconstruction of his home, now that the Veco contractors have finished with Stevens place? He knows he can’t wait for GWB to rebuild his porch.
The lobbyist rules is an interesting cover, but it seems off. He still has to wait a year, right? So instead of hanging around for 4 more years of his term and then having a two year lobbyist wait, he hangs around for a month or so to have a one year wait? That only makes sense if he was leaving SOON (not serving out his term) no matter what and decided to leave a bit sooner to shave a year off the lobbyist rules. So he’s sitting out 08 as not a Senator and not a lobbyist (yet)? All to become a lobbyist in post-08 when Dems should have an even stronger position?
Well, ok, maybe.
btw – here’s a kos diary up on the guy I’d like to see run against McConnell.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/11/26/101850/23
Larry Flynnt at it again?
Have you read this Iraq forever over at TPmuckraker
White House Releases â€Principles†for Permanent Iraqi Presence
By Spencer Ackerman – November 26, 2007, 11:12AM
So it begins. After years of obfuscation and denial on the length of the U.S.’s stay in Iraq, the White House and the Maliki government have released a joint declaration of â€principles†for â€friendship and cooperation.†Apparently President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed the declaration during a morning teleconference
There won’t be a special election in the sense there is for House vacancies. There will be an appointment and then an election to full the unexpired term (with the appointee running as the incumbent) at the same time as the 2008 general election. There will also be a primary at the same time as the MS primary.
Charles Pickering is the leading candidate, but he just announced he would niot stand for reelection to the House â€to spend more time with his family.†This sort of boxes him in for the Senate, but probably not a problem since he’s a Republican.
I still think the ’squeeze’ is on, which may later explain, in part, the ’low-profiling’ for now, of the Abramoff and Franklin cases.
And…
Prior to Bush and Cheney stepping down, the Republicans would change-out their minority leaders in anticipation of a ’fresh’ start…I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.
OT Do we know if the sequence of CIA Leak events went something like –
July 8 – Libby leaks to Judy on the Secret Mission
Aug – Aspen Institute meeting
Aug – Jackson Hole meeting (Cheney, Libby, Miller?)
Sep – Libby uses Addington’s ’Compartmentalization’ scheme to ’curtain-off’ Bush, Cheney, Libby, and the Secret Mission to Miller.
Sep 29 – Formal investigation begins.
rfw
Yes, but I’m not yet convinced that Judy was telling the truth about meeting Libby in Jackson Hole. Did you know, for example, that the presidential residence at Camp David is named the Aspen cabin? You see, it could have been a reference to the efforts to drum up war the weekend of September 7-8 2002, at which Tony Blair attended and out of which teh aluminum tubes arose.
But as to the question of whether the Aspen reference pre-dated the time when Libby and Cheney were in Jackson Hole over the first week of October 2003, making up stories to protect Cheney? Yes, the Judy meeting appears to have happened first.
Hmmm. I say it’s a sex scandal until proven otherwise. The lobbyist excuse doesn’t wash. Given a choice between money and power, a shrewd man (Lott may be a racist asshole, but he’s nobody’s fool.) will always choose power.
EW – Do we know if Judy’s ’un-recollected’ second notebook, the one suddenly found at her Sag Harbor home, was the ’secret mission’ notebook?
rfw
If we’re taking the Secret Mission to be the July 8 conversation, then no–that notebook was the first one turned over. In any case, the second notebook was under her desk, in her brown paper bag filing system.
â€Her brown paper bag filing system†under her desk. Isn’t that where she keeps her cheap wine? (out of respect for our local friend, I have not referred to the wine as â€Mad Dogâ€).
with lott gone,Mississippi is wide oren
the other Senator from Mississippi had to be talked out of retirement by repuglitards recently
there’s a guy named Mike Moore who has won statewide elections in Mississippi, and he wants to run against whatever placeholder haley barbor appoints (haley barbor maybe ???)
and there is talk that Morgan Freeman might run against the other guy
and YES, we’re talking about â€That†Morgan Freeman
Senate Supermajority, here we come