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IMHO, this is how the script should play out on January 6th, when the GOP Senate caucus has scheduled to meet:

1) The GOP Senate caucus should vote Lott back in as Majority Leader, to prove to the DemocRats, the press and Hillary and all her War Room minions that despite their best efforts, they did not break the GOP's back with their attempt at character assassination.

2) Immediately, Lott should rise and resign his leadership post, stating that the President's agenda is too important to risk even a tiny chance that his personal struggles might impede progress. He should continue by stating concisely what "all these problems" are that he was jovially referring-to in his tribute to Thurmond: unconstitutional Federal meddling in all aspects of everyone's lives, an unsupportable and historic level of taxation, a military weakened by eight years of Clintonian neglect, terror at home, unrest abroad, five trillion dollars down the black hole of welfare, borders that leak like sieves...

3) The Senate GOP should then elect Nickles and get on with addressing Lott's list at a crisp pace.

From Peggy Noonan in today's WSJ Opinon Journal website:

Q: Why are you conservative pundit-writer-chatterer types so passionate about this?

A: Lots of reasons. One is that we're tired of being embarrassed by people who aren't sensitive to the reality of race in America. We're tired of being humiliated by politicians who otherwise see many things as we do but who seem to have an inability to be constructive and understanding about race. We're tired to being associated with hate mongering. We care about our country, and we think patriotism demands a constructive attitude in this big area.

Some of us have put our reputations in jeopardy by supporting programs like the school liberation movement because we want to help people who don't have much and need a break. Or we've put ourselves in jeopardy by opposing racial preferences, or any number of other programs, for the very reason that we believe completely in our hearts and minds that all races are equal and no one should be judged by the color of his skin. And then some guy comes along and speaks the old code of yesteryear and seems to reinforce the idea that those who hold conservative positions are really, at heart, racist. We are indignant, and we have been for a long time.

In the Lott scandal our indignation reached critical mass. A lot of conservatives, many of them 50 and under, decided enough is enough, let's end this, let a new party be born. And by the way, in the particular case of Trent Lott, it didn't start yesterday. Stanley Crouch just surprised me by sending me a column he wrote almost four years ago for the New York Daily News. It was about a Lott appearance before the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white-supremacist group. I said it was springtime and it's time to throw out the garbage, and Mr. Lott should go. Go to the archives of conservative journals and see what they've been writing and thinking for a long time about race. This is a good time to get real conservative thinking out there and known for what it is.