Lott chosen as GOP whip
WASHINGTON – Four years after racially impolitic remarks cost him the Senate’s top post, Trent Lott of Mississippi rejoined Congress’ leadership ranks Wednesday as his Republican colleagues turned to the veteran insider and skilled vote-counter to help them plot their return to majority status.
By a 25-to-24 secret-ballot vote, Lott defeated Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tenn., for the post of minority whip, the party’s second-highest post. As expected, GOP senators elected Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as minority leader for the new Congress that convenes in January. But his victory was tempered by Lott’s come-from-behind win over Alexander, who was seen as McConnell’s and the Bush administration’s preferred choice for whip.
Lott’s feat ranks among the more impressive political comebacks of recent times, just as his December 2002 fall from grace was spectacular and painful. At a 100th birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., Lott said the nation “wouldn’t have had all these problems” if Thurmond had been elected president in 1948. Thurmond had run on a segregationist platform as a Dixiecrat that year, and critics denounced the remarks as racist.
Lott said he simply was flattering an old man. But Bush administration supporters and other Republicans helped engineer his ouster, replacing him with Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn. Now Frist is retiring and Republicans are reeling from last week’s elections, which gave Democrats a 51-to-49 edge in the Senate and a bigger margin in the House.
As GOP senators emerged Wednesday from their closed-door meeting in the Capitol, several said the shock of last week’s results prompted wavering colleagues to vote for Lott, who has spent 33 years in Congress (to Alexander’s four), much of it negotiating deals and crafting compromises.
“We’re going through a major transformation from the majority to minority status in both the House and Senate,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, a prominent GOP moderate and Lott supporter. “So it does require somebody who’s got that institutional knowledge and appreciation for what it’s going to take not only to rebuild Republicans within the institution but also nationally.”
Implicitly noting that Lott has never been close to President Bush, Snowe added, “There are times when you can’t put all your eggs in the president’s basket.”
The White House said Bush, en route to Singapore, phoned Lott from Air Force One to congratulate him.
Snowe said she believes Americans are ready to forgive the Thurmond remarks.
“He regrets it and has apologized,” she said. “I think people have admired how he has been able to come back from that. He paid a heavy price and he deeply regrets that, obviously.”
Lott, 65, was uncharacteristically mum after the election, telling reporters it was McConnell’s day to shine.
Asked if he had any new reflections on the 1948 presidential race, he laughed and said, “Oh no, not at all, I’m strictly looking forward.”