The Hotline is reporting that outgoing Majority Leader Bill Frist has decided not to seek the Republican nomination for President in 2008.
You can call this a non-starter for a non-starter. The reason: political scientists and historians will write that Frist was the worst, least effective Senate Majority leader at least 100 years — from either party.
A Majority Leader is supposed to be able to line up votes, keep his Senatorial troops in line, take the pulse of the Senate so he can then score some victories and, if his party has the White House, give the President sound political advice and strategies to advance the President’s agenda. Frist was the White House’s candidate to replace Trent Lott, after Lott self-destructed due to his comments about Strom Thurmond. Frist bungled votes, backed tactics and measures that alienated moderate and independent voters and gave the White Huuse advice that lost rather than gained support.
He flip flopped so much (a few times after talking with the White House) that a shoe should be named after him. He made GOPers long for the days of Trent Lott — who has now returned to a key Senate leadership spot.
Frist had his finger up to the political wind. It’s clear what conclusion he reached as to which way the political winds were blowing in terms of chances with Republican primary voters.
“Thank you” to Americablog for the tip.
NOTE TO READERS: We have a bit of a problem. For some weird reason, when I posted this it first disabled comments. Then this post took the permalink for an earlier post I did on Borat. That post is TOTALLY GONE NOW. We will be monitoring this problem. If you left a comment on my Borat post — which I will not re-write — it is here.
If you’re a blogger and link to this post, presumably it will be OK but this is actually the link to a previous post that has vanished totally.
CORRECTION: Ed Morrissey noted an error in this post and we thank him for pointing it out: “Frist ran for office on a pledge to self-limit to two terms. That’s one of the major reasons he did not run again.” We’ve removed the erroneous statement.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.