THE NEW YORK TIMES HAS A GOOD STORY on the Lott affair, and how it was kept alive from the right, not the left.

I’ve heard some folks say “I’d rather lose the Senate than keep it with Lott as Majority Leader.” I think that’s right, though I think Lott’s purported threat to quit and let the Democrats take the Senate is hot air and bluster even if the reports are true. He won’t go back to Mississippi — they never do. And he won’t be able to stay in Washington and make a living as a fat-cat lobbyist after (1) making racist remarks; and then (2) betraying his party. And he knows that.

This story in the Christian Science Monitor sort of agrees, though it goes out of its way to minimize the contributions of weblogs. Well, I agree with Kaus that we should avoid “blogger triumphalism” here. But the story quotes an “online media expert” as saying that NPR drove the story, which is just absurd.