As Senate Majority Leader Frist prepares to run for the Presidency, chatter has increased on Capitol Hill surrounding who will replace him if the Republicans manage to hold the majority in the Senate in 2006.

Former leader Trent Lott from Mississippi is looking like he could make a comeback to get his old job back. This, my friends, would not be good for America.

From The Hill:

The prospect of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) returning to leadership next year is creating more and more buzz on and off Capitol Hill, Republican insiders say.

The higher volume of talk has been fueled partly by his former aides who hold influential lobbying positions downtown, but prominent GOP insiders with no special allegiance to Lott say it extends well beyond his inner circle.

Perhaps by coincidence, Senate Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has recently sought a more public leadership role, appearing more often before television cameras set up outside the GOP conference’s Tuesday luncheons, and has otherwise made himself more available to the press.

If Lott were to return he would have to challenge one of several colleagues for a leadership post. At the end of last year, he said he could challenge McConnell’s bid to become majority leader, but he has since backed away from that threat.

Lott resigned his post in 2002 after some pretty inappropriate comments at Strom Thurmond’s 145th birthday party.

“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either,” Lott said at last week’s party.”

Senator Trent Lott thinks he’s great. So great, in fact, that he’s preparing for another shot at Senate Leadership once Bill Frist goes off to run for President. Bill Frist, by the way, will quickly realize that no one supports him because he’s a wacko and will go back to diagnosing patients via VHS tape.

Read more about Lott’s plans here:

Senator Trent Lott keeps a dog-eared piece of paper in his pocket showing which senators supported his proposal to spend $700 million to move a railroad line in his home state of Mississippi, and which opposed him.

Lott keeps the paper so he can “pull it out and remind people who voted with me and who didn’t,” he said.

A former Senate majority leader, Lott, 64, has never stopped keeping score as he eyes a possible return to the Republican leadership after the November elections.

“It’s totally ludicrous that we are doing this. I’ll be eating with my wife and so will a lot more senators after we pass this one.”

– Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), speaking on the lobbyist paid meal ban that the U.S. Senate passed yesterday.