PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: IF HE’D FIGURED THIS OUT FIVE YEARS AGO — or even three years ago, when PorkBusters started — the G.O.P. might still be a majority party. Trent Lott on pork-barrel spending:

Lott was known as one of the “Princes of Pork” while he was in Congress for his ability to bring home the bacon to Mississippi and he said that also caused some friction with McCain. . . .

Then Lott made a couple of admissions I found startling.

“But you know what, in my heart I knew he was right,” he said of his pork barrel ways. That’s no way to do business, we shouldn’t be doing all that earmarking — it got completely out of control.

“It got out of control with Republicans and that’s why we are being punished a little bit,” he added. “Because we forgot how we got there, what we believed in, the principles that after 30 years put us in the majority, gave us the White House, the congress, the senate, the house. And then we ran out of ideas… “

You don’t say.