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.