The American Spectator

Trent Lott moved to block the nomination of Jonathan Adelstein to the Federal Communications Commission. Adelstein is an aide to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle , and the move is seen as a payback to Daschle for killing any chance of a floor vote on Pickering. /p>

Daschle had recommended Adelstein to the Bush White House and received favorable responses. In doing so, ironically, Daschle was following a process established by then majority leader Lott during the Clinton years, to allow the Senate Majority Leader a key say in dealings with the White House on nominations to federal committees and commissions. “Lott realizes now that his getting into bed with Clinton to move nominations during the nineties is burning him now,” says a Republican Senate leadership aide. “Now Daschle has the power, and he’s using it. It will be interesting to see how Lott adapts.”

p>Apparently not very well. Instead of trying to simply kill off a couple Democratic friendly nominations, Lott announced last Friday that he will also attempt to kill legislation in the Senate that would appropriate a little more than $1 million for Senate hearings into how federal law enforcement has operated since the 9/11 attacks. br> “He’s trying to kill legislation the Bush administration wants,” says another GOP Senate leadership aide. “Lott is angry over Pickering, who’s a friend, but he’s just not thinking clearly on this stuff. Why hurt Republicans?” /p>

Lott’s seeming errors in judgment are compounded by the fact that many Republicans and Democrats alike blame Pickering’s defeat on Lott’s failure to do solid advance work with his colleagues before the nomination hearings took place. “Senator Lott did nothing for Pickering leading up to the hearings,” says a Democratic Judiciary Committee staffer. “Maybe he assumed the White House was doing more, but Lott could have done more to curry favor with our people. He had to know the NAACP and others were working us hard.”