NRO Online features a “professional Republican operative”'s thoughts on Lott (no word on whether or not this is Karl Rove, the hard left's bogeyman to compare with Sid Blumenthal, on deep background):

If Trent remains, what does the world look like come January 7th? More pointedly, do you envision a time when the President can again appear in the same room with the Senate majority leader? (I can't.) Can you then justify electing a leader who subsequently becomes for the president his party's own Yasser Arafat, with whom he will never meet nor shake hands? Will you put the President in that horrible position? Forget about the passing of a conservative agenda — can the party or the conservative movement themselves hold together and withstand that strain?

I have to say I'd shed few tears for the demise of the current party system, but surely this is an exaggeration — or is it?