WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans officially elected a new team of leaders Wednesday headed by Trent Lott of Mississippi, transforming the Senate leadership from the last bastion of the GOP's pragmatic wing into a well-fortified redoubt of its conservative faction.
A day after Bob Dole resigned from the Senate to run for president full time, Republicans elected Lott to succeed him as majority leader. He won by a landslide margin of 44 to 8 over fellow Mississippian Thad Cochran, an old-school Republican of a more conciliatory bent.
Republicans also elevated two other strident conservatives, choosing Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) to succeed Lott as assistant majority leader and Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) to fill the mid-level leadership post of Policy Committee chairman.
Colleagues predicted that Lott and his lieutenants will be more aggressive and confrontational in advancing the flagging GOP legislative agenda. But Lott insisted that it will be a change of style, not substance.
"The torch has been passed but the flame is the same," Lott said after he was elected majority leader in a closed-door party caucus. "Our agenda will be the same as the one that Bob Dole laid out for us. We do want to control the size and scope of government."
Republicans were hopeful that the new team's conservative cast will help bridge divisions between Senate Republicans and the more conservative House GOP. Indeed, in one of his first initiatives as leader, Lott traveled the House side of the Capitol more than once this week to help leaders there try to quell a rebellion among conservative freshmen opposed to a GOP budget bill.
Lott said that he wants the budget to be his first legislative accomplishment as leader. He also wants a health insurance bill to move quickly, although President Clinton is expected to veto it if Republicans do not make further concessions. Other priorities for the rest of the year, he told reporters, include immigration reform as well as the tax and spending bills needed to carry out the budget resolution.
"I am humbled because I know of the work we have to do," Lott said in his first speech on the Senate floor as leader.
Absent from his list of legislative priorities, however, was a measure to roll back the gas tax that Dole had made a campaign issue.
