GOP: Not A Whole Lott of Lovin’
Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott will become the sixth Republican senator to announce that he is stepping down in this election cycle if reports of his resignation are true.
The Mississippian’s term doesn’t expire until 2012 and Republican Governor Haley Barbour would have to appoint a replacement to serve before a special election is held.
We’ll probably know soon enough why Lott is bailing out, but there are pretty much only three scenarios:
* The diabolical shape of the GOP and likelihood that it won’t regain control of Congress in 2008 and will have an uphill fight to keep the White House. A subset of this is that Lott had stayed in office to help his state recover from Hurricane Katrina and now believes the work has progressed enough that he can leave.
* He’s got legal problems.
* He or a family member have a serious health issue.
And then there possibly is a fourth scenario as noted by commenters below:
Sheer selfishness. Lott is quitting so that he can get in under the wire on a new two-year ban on legislators becoming Washington lobbyists.
Lott won a fourth term last year with 64 percent of the vote.
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7 Responses to “GOP: Not A Whole Lott of Lovin’”
Word is that he’s resigning now so he can become a lobbyist before the new lobbying restriction provisions become law. Pure selfishness, it seems. Now Haley Barbour can appoint Chip Pickering as interim Senator until a new election is held next year. If former Democratic AG Mike Moore runs, the Dems could pick up one of the two Mississippi seats up for election (Cochran is up for re-election as well).
WaPo posed a fourth rationale for Lott’s decision. He is resigning now so that the recently legislated 2 year ban, which comes into effect in ’08, won’t effect his plans to work for Washington lobbying firms. If he resigns before the end of the year, he will only be banned from working for one of them for one year.
[...] Mine GOP: Not A Whole Lott of Lovin’ » This Summary is from an article posted at The Moderate Voice » Domestic and international news [...]
[...] our own Shaun Mullen posted earlier concerning Trent Lott’s planned resignation from the US Senate, we thought a round-up might [...]
Lobbyistlobbyistlobbyist! That’s what it probably is.
Besides, it’s no fun facing a Democratic White House for at least four years starting in 2009, which I believe is likely.
Except that the GOP has a decent chance of retaining the WH. The two top Democratic candidates have electability problems. It does seem odd that he’d retire right after being re-elected.
He and W finished their work on the damage caused by Katrina. All those FEMA trailers can now go to Iran to continue the GWOT(GCOIF). ST is looking up smilin…