As much fun as I am having laughing at the Senate Republicans for their choice of Trent Lott as Minority Whip, I have to say that there are several good reasons why Lott just barely beat out Lamar Alexander.  First, the best reason of all: he wasn’t Lamar Alexander.  Now Alexander seems like a very nice fellow.  He wears plaid shirts when campaigning, which supposedly shows that he is a down-to-earth guy just like you and me.  But Senate Republicans must have been feeling as if they were living in early 2001 all over again as the second coming of Bill Frist was preparing to take over the leadership.  They must have looked back over the last five years of near-total failure in the Senate to accomplish much of anything, noticed that they were now going to be in the minority and asked, “Who brought us to this pass?”  The answer?  A Tennessean nebbish of a doctor (who, hilariously enough, once had aspirations of becoming President!).  So when they looked at Alexander for a different but important position in the leadership, I bet they ran through a little list in their minds: “Is he from Tennessee? Yes.  Is he a nebbish?  Yes.  And he wears plaid, for goodness’ sake!  We can’t endure any more of this kind of thing.”  Perhaps this is unfair to Lamar Alexander.  Perhaps, like BSG‘s Laura Roslin, the former Secretary of Education would have proven to be a wily and cunning member of the Senate leadership who would surprise us all with feats of political derring-do.  More likely, he would prove to be even squishier and weaker than Lott already is while lacking the parliamentary skills that Lott possesses. 

Then there are Lott’s apparently considerable skills at playing the legislative game to consider.  Yes, he is the same deal-maker who led the Senate Republicans into deepest mediocrity in the late Clinton years (although, let us recall that after the narcolepsy-inducing leadership of Bob Dole, he was considered a big step up by a lot of people), but if there is someone you need in the minority it is a skilled parliamentarian combined with a used car salesman.  Trent Lott is the embodiment of both.  This is why he inspires so little admiration, but manages to inspire some small degree of confidence among his colleagues.

Jonah Goldberg fulminates at the Senate GOP for their choice, mostly because, if I follow his argument, it gives them a bad image, in part because of Lott’s preposterous defenestration over a few kind words to the late Strom Thurmond on the venerable Senator’s birthday and also because his deal-making tendencies allegedly highlight the reasons for GOP defeat.  But the main sources of GOP electoral woes were not dubious legislative bargains or supposed paeans to the platform of the States’ Rights Party, but were the GOP’s completely reckless spending, their dithering and failure on immigration policy, the earmark explosion on their watch, corrupt Congressmen and, of course, Iraq.  Legislative horse-trading that actually gets legislation passed and signed into law would probably be greeted in many circles with sighs of relief; people would babble about the wonders of bipartisanship and the old collegiality of the Senate binding up the nation’s wounds.  This is all a lot of tripe, but it is what people say.  

Having Lott’s bad image is a problem of sorts, but having the image of being led in part by yet another dopey, ineffectual Tennessean (no offense intended to all other Tennesseans who are decidedly not dopey and ineffectual) is in some ways even worse.  There are many vulnerable Senate seats for the GOP in ’08, and if they want to start protecting them they could not have afforded a Lamar Alexander as the man responsible for bringing Senate Republicans together in the tough legislative fights that may be coming. 

What should really worry the GOP is not that Lott won, but that he was the best of the two choices on offer.  Is the Senate GOP membership really so weak that these were the best they could do?  Had they wanted to send a serious message of change and responsiveness to voter concerns, bringing a Chuck Hagel into the leadership would have made a huge statement.  But, of course, it is not a statement they would want to make. 

Across the board, the GOP seems not to be getting the message of why they lost.  Thus Mel Martinez becomes general chair of the RNC and thinks that the GOP lost because it was too harsh in opposing immigration.  Boehner and Blunt will probably remain to guide the House Republicans ever deeper into the minority (though, again, when someone as pro-amnesty as Pence is the “conservative” alternative to Boehner, House members must be scratching their heads about why they need to make a change at the top when the replacement is probably no better on a vital question).  At this rate, if he weren’t term-limited out of running again, I assume Tom Reynolds would have to return to head the NRCC after his stellar performance this year.