From "The Note"
CNN's Congressional Correspondent Jonathan Karl writes in The New Republic (without a link sadly) about Trent Lott's transition from staid majority leader to a rowdy rank and file senator. And look who Mr. Karl reports is the former leader's role model.
"When Trent Lott returned to the Senate in January as a fallen leader betrayed by his colleagues, there was one Republican he was eager to see: John McCain. Before Lott's fall, McCain had been the Mississippi senator's nemesis, constantly bucking his leadership and publicly airing Republican dirty laundry. Now, Lott had a surprising message for McCain: 'I'm going to be just like you.'"
"Lott's newfound admiration for the Arizona senator stems partly from the fact that McCain didn't kick him when he was down. After Lott made his now infamous comments about Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential campaign, reporters naturally turned to McCain as the logical Republican to criticize Lott and call for his ouster as party leader; after all, McCain had publicly clashed with Lott on virtually everything else. But McCain was publicly silent and, behind the scenes, refused to join the effort to push Lott out. In fact, during the ordeal, he offered Lott damage-control advice. All this while, Lott's supposed Republican friends betrayed him."
"Liberated from the dual constraints of party leadership and political loyalty, Lott is in a position to possibly have more of a lasting impact on the Senate than he did as majority leader. 'I do feel a certain degree of newfound freedom,' Lott said recently outside his remote office on the fourth floor of the Russell Senate Office Building. 'If I am going to be here, I am going to have an impact, to be a player, not just to get even but to make this place work better.' And Lott intends to do that by embracing reform measures sure to unsettle his GOP colleagues--first among them the man who succeeded him as Republican leader, Bill Frist."
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