Good News for campaign

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Good News for campaign finance reform!

Or at least that’s how the story is running today as Senator Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi, has agreed to become the sixtieth vote in favor of allowing a free debate and vote on McCain-Feingold. Hell, they’ve even decided to rename it McCain-Feingold-Cochran. (Really! No kidding.)

This is actually more interesting than it looks.

All politics may be local. But in congress it’s almost as often personal. And that clearly looks like what’s up here. Thad Cochran and his fellow Mississippi Senator Trent Lott have known each other for almost their whole lives. They were actually both cheerleaders at Ole Miss back in the fifties. (Nope, I kid you not) And they’ve been rivals – sometimes friendly, often quite unfriendly – for years.

At first Cochran seemed like the star of the duo. He made the jump to the Senate a decade before Lott. But since then things have changed dramatically. And they’ve most all gone Lott’s way. Lott made a name for himself in the House and then followed Cochran into the Senate in 1988. And Lott has been outpacing Cochran ever since.

When Bob Dole resigned from the Senate in 1996 Cochran and Lott ran against each for Majority Leader and, of course, Lott won.

Lott and Mitch McConnell have been stymieing McCain’s bill for years now and they especially don’t want it to come up now just after the inauguration in time to spoil the president’s honeyman. The whole thing has made McCain and Lott something very close to arch-enemies.

So Cochran’s decision to sign on as McCain’s sixtieth vote isn’t simply or even mainly about campaign finance. This isn’t Cochran’s campaign finance reform vote. It’s his Trent-I’ve-Always- Been-Better-Than-You -So-Go-Eat-#$&@ vote.

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