Race to the Exit
MSNBC reports what was behind the scenes:
AFTER A FUTILE two-week struggle to hang on to his job, Lott made the decision to call it quits on Thursday night, after he began receiving call after call from influential Senate Republicans telling him they no longer supported him. One by one, they lined up behind Sen. Bill Frist, the rising star of the Senate and a good friend of President Bush, who had let it be known that he wanted to replace Lott as majority leader. For the record, Bush claimed it was fine with him if Lott kept his position, but no one really believed that Bush meant it, or that Lott could survive for long. Until Friday it seemed that Lott was the only one in the country who hadn't gotten the message that it was time for him to go. As one Republican strategist told NEWSWEEK: "I don't know what else we can do short of putting a horse head in his bed."I can see it now... "We all know the Republicans' voting record on animal-rights issues. That Republican strategist just said out loud what we've always known. So we at PETA want to know: whose horse did you kill, and what glue factory got the rest of it after Lott got the head? This was no hypothetical - they killed a beautiful animal just for political gain!"
