Mitch mcconnell, who loves his role as Washington's coldest-blooded tough guy, got right to the point in a cross-country conference call last Friday night with a score of his fellow Republican senators. The topic: what to do about The Leader? Trent Lott had just finished his fourth, and most fulsome, apologia for having praised Strom Thur-mond's stridently segregationist presidential campaign of 1948. Many GOP bosses―in and out of the White House― still wanted Lott bounced from his role as majority leader when the Congress returns next month. Lott, in their view, had come across as too much of a "seg," an embarrassment in a party eager to sell itself as a Big Tent of "compassionate conservatism."
展开▼
