Writing in The New Republic Online on December 15, Noam Scheiber observed that “removing a sitting majority leader isn’t so easy” and that “it’s tough to see how that challenge would get off the ground.”
Noting that conservatives McConnell and Santorum were remaining loyal to Lott, that “moderate Republicans wanted nothing to do with Nickles’s intrigue, either,” and that Bill Frist “demurred” when asked if Lott should resign, Scheiber argued that none of this gave any evidence “of a politiican, or a party, ready to cannibalize its leader.”
By December 20 Lott was lunch.
