Whilst currently located thousands and thousands of miles away in Turkey, Jim Geraghty has managed to take a pretty accurate snapshot of Washington, and the political retreads poised to--for lack of a better word--grace the stage in 2007:

And if you think the sole fallout from Trent Lott’s reappearance in the Senate GOP leadership is going to be just “a few bad headlines and a little disgust” … well, I think the word “macaca” can refute that notion. With Lott’s return to leadership, all of the GOP’s outreach efforts to African-Americans that were already sputtering after Katrina just collapsed. What’s more, the GOP just alienated millions of non-aligned soccer-mom-type voters whose sole mental picture of Lott are his comments about Thurmond and his stammering, ham-handed efforts at damage control afterwards. (Yes, the Democrats’ procedural wizard, Robert Byrd, was a Klan member (from one kind of a wizard to another, huh?) and yes, it’s unfair that the media gives Byrd a free pass. Deal with it. Life is often unfair, particularly in Washington, and particularly when dealing with the media.) Every time Lott plays a key role in a vote in the coming two years, we will see or hear the words “Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, who offended many African-Americans in 2002 with comments that appeared to endorse segregation, said today that…”

By comparison, had the GOP Senate caucus gone the other way, the sentences would read, “Senate Minority Whip Lamar Alexander, who in 1996 demonstrated an unhealthy level of enthusiasm for red and black plaid, said today that…”

I don’t say this as a huge fan of Lamar Alexander, but simply to note that he doesn’t come into the job with enormous amounts of baggage that a hostile media and political opponents will utilize at every opportunity. In a media environment such as this, you don’t give your opponent a stick to beat you over the head with.

Of course, our friends on the other side of the aisle may be about to elect House Majority Leader Murtha (Fund's article is a must-read) and House Select Intelligence Committee Chair Alcee Hastings, who was impeached as a judge and convicted for bribery. So our great nation is getting the worst of both worlds.