Senate GOP to pick new leader today

? Now that they have deposed one party leader and are to elect another today, Senate Republicans are working to limit the damage that Trent Lott’s words had on GOP efforts to court minority voters.

“I think this will present no handicap whatsoever in our ongoing effort to convince the nonwhite citizens of our country that the Republican Party is the place to be,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the incoming No. 2 Republican leader.

“In the long sweep of American history, this is going to be a blip,” McConnell told “Fox News Sunday.”

Senate Republicans planned to elevate Bill Frist of Tennessee in a conference call this afternoon, making him majority leader when the GOP retakes Senate control in the new Congress that convenes in early January.

Lott, R-Miss., resigned Friday, more than two weeks after his verbal blunder that implied he favored racial segregation. Lott’s praise of Strom Thurmond’s segregationist run for president in 1948 had put the entire Republican Party on the defensive, from the White House down.

He will return to the Senate in January, but not in a leadership position. Republican sources said it appeared that Lott, a senator since 1989, had waited too long to end the controversy and lost any leverage he might have had to cut a deal to become a committee chairman.

“There is no apparent position of influence to which we can elect him,” McConnell said. “He will, in my view, have enormous influence as someone who knows a lot about how the Senate works.”

The incoming Judiciary Committee chairman, GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, praised President Bush — as the party’s top leader — for reaching out to all people and he criticized Democrats who argue that Republicans’ positions hold little appeal for minorities.

“The attitude is that only Democrats care about minorities. That’s pure B.S.,” Hatch said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“I think every Republican is working hard to try and be good to minorities and do what’s right. We can’t support some of the far-left, you know, extreme approaches toward race, but we certainly do believe in equality.”