DAVE WEIGEL LISTS HIS CANDIDATES for Trent Lott’s replacement as majority leader.

I’m not sure that Trent Lott can really be “replaced,” though. Just succeeded.

UPDATE: Rob Smith is ready to be rid of Lott. Meanwhile, Drudge is reporting:

After a fiery speech by Strom Thurmond at a Mississippi campaign rally in November 1980, Lott, then a congressman, told a crowd: ‘You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today’… MORE… Quotation appeared in an account of the rally on Nov. 3, 1980, in Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss…

I think this story is just taking off. And, as a look at Smith’s bio indicates, if you’ve lost him, you’ve lost the South. And Lott’s lost him, big time. Meanwhile, here’s a cartoon by John Cole in the Durham Herald-Sun, and here’s a blog entry by Cole comparing Lott’s “apology” to the non-apology from Gerhard Schroeder’s Justice Minister Herta Däubler-Gmelin, who compared Bush to Hitler.

And we all know what happened to Herta, don’t we?

UPDATE: Here’s a New York Times story expanding on the Drudge quote above.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The two John Coles items are from different John Coles. They just happened to come in at about the same time, with the same name. Go figure.