Quaking in their boots

You know the Republicans are scared when Robert Novak is speculating that if Trent Lott retires after this year, the Republicans will lose the Senate seat in Mississippi (and possibly the whole Senate) to the Democrats. While it is probably just an attempt by the Republicans, through their shill Novak, to pressure Lott away from retirement, it demonstrates a genuine (and justified) fear that the Republicans have had their time and they are going to lose. A few quotes from the article that are revealing (both of Republican fears and Novak's complete lack of shame):

"For the longer range, Lott's retirement and replacement could signal that Southern political realignment has peaked and now is receding."
[... Prominent Mississippi Republicans] believe Lott will probably retire. If so, they expect the new senator will be a Democrat, former State Attorney General Mike Moore.
[...]A Bush entreaty now to Lott is ironic. Lott was driven out of the Senate majority leader's chair after the 2002 elections when the president refused to defend him from calumnies that a harmless jocular remark on the late Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday was racist in nature. Lott's recently published memoir ("Herding Cats") reveals he was deeply hurt by Bush's non-support.

The last quote is to illustrate the complicity and total lack of shame of Novak. Saying that if Strom Thurmond had been elected as a Dixiecrat president, we wouldn't "have the same problems we have today". Given that the Dixiecrats campaigned almost solely on a racist platform, it is a racist statement and a sentiment that underlies the Republican strategy in the South since the Civil Rights Era (despite their professed apologies).