Trent Lott: 'I don't like being in minority'
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Trent Lott's retirement is the Senate's companion to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's, an acknowledgment by an iconic GOP warrior there's little power or fun being in the minority -- and Republicans should get used to it.
"I've been in the majority and I've been in the minority, back and forth, six times. I don't like being in the minority as much," Lott mused Monday when the Mississippi Republican announced his retirement. "And if I were 20 years younger, I'd be mounting my horse saying, 'Let's get this majority back.' "
He decided to hold his ground this time, Lott said, after a procession of difficulties: losing his mother, watching his home and his home state suffer from Hurricane Katrina, and muscling through a slew of recent legislative measures that he said felt heavier and more stubborn than any in his 35-year legislative career.
Talk of burnout by Congress' merriest power-slinger reflects the GOP's grim reality: The public is in no mood to return Republicans to the congressional majority anytime soon.
As Hastert did during his farewell from the House floor, Lott waxed philosophic and quoted from Ecclesiastes about seasons and change.
"I do think that it's time for Mississippi to elect a new person, a younger person," Lott, 66, told reporters.
Some in the party are clamoring for a new face on the GOP after it took a wartime battering as part of what party officials see as a long-term effort to win back congressional control.
There remained philosophical disagreements about how to do that, but numbers provide ample opportunity for just such a makeover.
Lott's is the 23rd Senate seat Republicans will be defending in November, nearly twice the 12 seats Democrats will fight to keep. The chamber is split, 49-49 with two independents who typically vote with Democrats and give that party the schedule-setting majority.
The GOP re-branding started in the Senate Republican leadership long before Lott made his official announcement. Early Monday a slate of GOP senators began a furious round of phone calls to rally support for their leadership campaigns.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., announced through a spokesman that he would seek to move up from GOP Conference chairman to Lott's post as the vote-counting whip, the Republicans' No. 2 spot in the Senate after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
A scramble ensued for the leadership posts down-ballot. Among those interested were Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, John Cornyn of Texas and freshman John Thune of South Dakota. Senate Republicans were expected to pick their new leaders as soon as next week.
Lott's announcement caps a tumultuous few years. He was forced to step down from his post as majority leader in 2002 after making racially insensitive remarks at a celebration for Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C. President Bush did not stand by Lott at the time.
Lott regained a role in GOP leadership last year when he won the whip's job by one vote over Alexander.
Lawmakers of both parties hailed Lott as a talented pragmatist and one of a handful of Republican leaders who relished his vote-wrangling duties in a chamber filled with outsized egos.
"Trent enjoyed bipartisan respect because of his reverence for the institutions of Congress and because Republicans and Democrats knew they could count on him to keep his commitments and his word," said Bush, who had a tempestuous relationship with Lott. "His immense talent will be missed."
Not given to superlatives, McConnell called Lott, "the best whip I've ever worked with." That's quite a compliment, since McConnell himself once held the job.
But Lott's talent for dealmaking also irked members of the conservative base, who sometimes saw his pragmatism as a series of political cave-ins. They urged Republican leaders going forward to draw distinctions on key issues from taxes to immigration, judges and marriage.
"The way out of the minority is the same way Republicans took in 1994 after 40 years of Democratic Party rule in Congress," said conservative consultant Keith Appell of CRC Public Relations. "Run on conservative principles, don't back down, don't stray once you win a seat in Congress, and know that long-term legislative victories are worth losing some congressional votes on principle in the short term."
The good news for Republicans on Monday: Lott's seat was not one likely to land in Democratic hands.
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EDITOR'S NOTE -- Laurie Kellman covers Congress for The Associated Press.