Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Even the White House’s chief spin doctor had to acknowledge the obvious. “I look around right now,” said Tony Snow on Saturday morning. “A lot of people are dispirited.”

Before him sat several hundred Republican Party officials, committee chairmen and chairwomen and executive directors from all 50 states, who had just endured the three-day winter meeting of the Grand Old Party. Snow had shown up for what he called a “pep talk” over a breakfast of eggs and waffles. He spoke of President Bush as an “aerobic” president and a “force of nature,” who stretches his quads during meetings at the Oval Office and whose spirit has not been dimmed by the 2006 elections. But at points, the pep resembled a postmortem. “The election shook up a lot of people, as you know,” Snow told the crowd. “The Republican Party does not need to remake itself. It needs to recover its soul.”

The last time so many Republican officials had convened in Washington was exactly one year ago. Back then, the GOP had won three national elections in three attempts, the last two times as the party of national security. In early 2006, Iraq was not yet a full-fledged catastrophe, and the faithful could still see themselves on the side of history. “The Republican Party has an agenda to run and win on,” White House political advisor Karl Rove told the winter meeting last January. He said President Bush would be known as “one of history’s Great Liberators,” and teased the Democrats for their “wild and reckless and false charges” about the president’s warrantless wiretap program.

Today, the president’s plan for victory in Iraq stands at 24 percent in the polls, and the White House has succumbed to Democratic demands for judicial review of wiretaps in the “war on terrorism.” The Democrats have regained control of Congress, and a growing chorus of Republican senators has begun to publicly scold the president for his plan in Iraq. As a result, little bravado was displayed this week in Grand Hyatt’s convention halls.

In fact, throughout the three-day event, Iraq was a four-letter word rarely spoken from the dais. It was the proverbial elephant in the room that Republicans did not want to see, the biggest single cause of their 2006 defeat and a major concern as they enter the 2008 cycle. But that does not mean the topic of war and its political consequences did not buzz through the hallways. “It’s coming out in meetings everywhere and it will come out in the primaries,” explained David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who was chatting up friends outside the meeting. “Not only do you have the question of whether or not we are wrong in Iraq,” he continued. “What is the conservative justification for international involvement?”

Inside the meeting, party functionaries preferred to put the blame for November’s rout elsewhere. “It was our lack of new ideas,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, in a lunchtime address on Thursday, “that didn’t give people a reason to go out and vote for us.”

Both Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who spoke Friday, offered very similar sets of recommendations to reclaim the country. Return to the roots on domestic policy: Low taxes, healthcare reform, entitlement reform, energy independence and fiscal discipline. “Recommitting to Reform” was the official theme of the meeting. McConnell mentioned the Iraq war only in passing: “My conference is considering the president’s plan to secure Baghdad.” Boehner did not directly mention it at all.

On Thursday night, President Bush hosted the state party leaders at a White House reception where he tempered his pleas for patience on Iraq with a promise to continue fundraising for the Republic National Committee until he leaves office. The event was enough to win support for Bush’s Iraq plan, said party officials, but several people said the support was tenuous. “I think most in the party will let the White House know that we need to make some dramatic changes if the current effort does not work,” said Alberto Cardenas, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party, who raised more than $100,000 for President Bush in the 2004 cycle. That moment of truth could come as soon as this summer, when the party is set to reconvene for another meeting.

Ken Mehlman, the GOP’s outgoing chairman, also failed to mention Iraq in his farewell speech. He spoke instead of rebuilding a bipartisan consensus in the war on terror. “Let’s work to put aside our differences on other issues and march together to defeat this common enemy, who threatens our common values — values that aren’t red or blue, but red, white and blue,” he told the crowd. Later, as he rode the hotel escalator, Mehlman explained that the Republicans and the president must accomplish two things to regain the support of the American people. First, he said, they must reconnect the war in Iraq to the broader war on terror, which the GOP successfully accomplished in 2004. Second, they must show that the war in Iraq can be won. “Where we have lost ground now is on people who are skeptical hawks,” he said. “They are hawks for the war, but they are skeptical of whether their hawkdom will win.”

As for the 2008 presidential race, Mehlman said he thought some of the concerns were overblown, and that the 2008 election would be decided on personalities. “I think there are Republicans that are concerned,” he said. “But I don’t believe the way it manifests itself is heading into ’08, a bunch of primary voters in Iowa and New Hampshire say, ‘We are not going to win the election because of Iraq, so let’s throw Iraq under the train.’ I don’t think they will vote on that issue.”

At the direction of President Bush, Mehlman will be replaced by two men, both of whom will carry the title of party chairman. Mike Duncan, the former general counsel of the party, will oversee the RNC’s day-to-day operations. Florida Sen. Mel Martinez, who came to America as a Cuban refugee, will become the public face of the committee, in charge of fundraising, press appearances and coordination with Congress.

Martinez’s election signals a clear intent by Republicans to make inroads among the nation’s Hispanic voters in 2008. It is also a defensive move against those Republicans who have advocated a far more punitive immigration policy than President Bush supports. Outside the hotel, protesters from Team America, a political action committee founded by anti-immigration activist Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., held signs that read “Nay to Mel.”

“While I don’t want to make race an issue, it’s really clear that they chose him because he is Hispanic,” complained Marcus Epstein, Team America’s executive director. Inside the hall, Martinez addressed the significance of his election. “Our party is not a party of racists,” Martinez said in a bilingual press conference Friday, after he was elected. “Nuestro partido no es un partido racista.”

But less than a year from the first primary, it was Iraq that remained on everyone’s mind. After Snow had finished speaking, members of the party’s leadership stood up to ask him questions. How would the U.S. deal with the Shiite militia in Baghdad? Do Iraqis still want American troops in Iraq? Snow worked hard to lift the crowd from its doldrums. “Everybody wants a narrative of the president curled up in the corner in the fetal position,” Snow said. “One of the things he told us right after the election was, ‘I am excited about the next two years.’”

The same cannot exactly be said about the members of the Republican Party’s leadership. They are as ready as ever to work hard for a big win in 2008, but they also know that one of the biggest factors in that victory — the fate of the Iraq war — is for now out of their control. “It depends how well the president convinces the voters,” said Pat Longo, who expected to be elected this month as a committeewoman from Connecticut. “He has to make the sale.”

What can you say about a 9-year old campaign-finance reform effort that died? That it was bold. And controversial. That it pissed off Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Bob Torricelli, D-N.J. And it was loved by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. And Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. And Common Cause. And the media.

The McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill died Tuesday as it failed to secure 60 “cloture” votes. Actually, it didn’t die. It was killed. A contract hit.

It took a truly bipartisan effort to do the deed. The GOP leadership won the award for chutzpah by wrapping itself in the right to free speech while denying McCain and Feingold the chance to exercise that right on the floor of the Senate Monday night.

And although McCain vowed afterward to “never give up” and “to do everything we can” to continue the fight, prospects that this bill will pass in this Senate, with this leadership, both Democratic and Republican, are nil.

Tuesday’s drama was more than just a rerun of old C-SPAN 2 footage, however. This time, the campaign finance reform effort was hobbled not only by GOP leaders like Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and McConnell, but by Democratic leaders as well. In the process, Torricelli revealed himself to be, in McCain’s words, “as passionately opposed to reform as are the critics … in my party.”

When McCain was asked what he and Feingold could have done differently, he lobbed grenades at Lott, who failed to honor his “gentleman’s promise” that he’d allow the bill five full days of debate. “Maybe we shouldn’t have relied on the word of people that said we’d be allowed to have an open and total debate on the issue,” McCain said, pointedly.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way, McCain said. After years of beating their heads against the status quo wall in Washington, McCain and Feingold had learned a few lessons not only about their heads, but about the wall as well.

Thus, this year, in an effort to line up 60 senators to support just the basic premise that their bill should be voted upon, McCain and Feingold pared down the measure significantly.

In the end, their bill contained a ban on the unregulated unrestricted party cash known as soft money, as well as a fairly uncontroversial measure codifying a 1988 Supreme Court decision that requires unions to get permission from non-union members before using their dues for political purposes.

But from the moment McCain-Feingold ’99 started its journey through the legislative process, it was a Dead Bill Walking.

Campaign-finance reform enemy No. 1 is, of course, McConnell, who is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee as well as the Senate Rules Committee. McConnell believes that, as he said on the Senate floor last Thursday, “the essence of this debate is indeed freedom — fundamental First Amendment freedom of speech … What the McCain-Feingold saga comes down to is an effort to have the government control all spending by, in support of, or in opposition to candidates, with a little loophole carving out the media’s own spending, of course.”

McConnell raised $37.6 million in soft money between January 1997 and June 1999 — it’s one of the major ways that he’s been able to help the GOP both win and maintain control of the Senate.

The NRSC is his own personal fiefdom, where he steers cash to the opponents of reformers — like former Rep. Mark Neuman, R-Wis., who ran against Feingold last year — and away from pro-reformers, like Rep. Linda Smith, R-Wash., who lost in her challenge to Democratic Sen. Patty Murray with almost no help from McConnell or his NRSC.

Likewise, Torricelli, as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is happy with the friends and alliances his ability to raise soft money garners him. From January 1997 through June of this year, the DSCC has raised $23.5 million in soft money. To his colleagues, Torricelli’s abrasive personality and general slipperiness are overshadowed by the big bag of campaign cash he holds in his dirty hands.

So when Torricelli stepped forward Friday to offer an amendment replacing McCain and Feingold’s pared-down bill with the more comprehensive House bill offered by Reps. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Marty Meehan, D-Mass., everyone on the reform side smelled a rat.

“The opponents of comprehensive reform oppose even the most elemental reform,” McCain said on the floor Tuesday. “And Mr. President, those opponents abide on both sides of the aisle — if not in equal numbers than in sufficient numbers.”

Three from those sufficient numbers were Torricelli, Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who gummed up the works on Friday by offering a series of confusing amendments that tied up what McCain and Feingold had hoped would be a clean amendment process.

But the Democratic leaders were just the jab in a one-two punch. The day before, McConnell and Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, trying to derail whatever meager momentum McCain-Feingold had, feigned offense at McCain’s assertion that the prevalence of $100,000 soft-money checks rendered the political process “corrupt.”

“For there to be corruption, someone must be corrupt,” McConnell said on the Senate floor on Thursday. McConnell challenged McCain to cite specific unseemly quid pro quos.

McCain demurred. “I do not intend to let this debate, which is about banning soft money, get into some kind of personal discussion. … This system makes good people do bad things. … I am not in the business of identifying individuals. I am attacking a system. I am attacking a system that has to be fixed and that [according to a poll by the Pew Charitable Trust] has caused 69 percent of young Americans between 18 and 35 to say they are disconnected from their government, that caused in the 1998 election the lowest voter turnout in history of 18- to 26-year-olds.”

On Friday, McConnell and Bennett’s crocodile tears were replaced by the fake caring smiles of Torricelli, Dachle and Reid. By trying to substitute McCain-Feingold’s legislative pragmatics with a bill that had not a candy bar’s chance at a fat farm of making it through the Senate (the more comprehensive Shays-Meehan House bill), the three liberal Democratic senators, according to McCain, “filled up the [amendment] tree, making other amendments meaningless.”

McCain had anticipated the Democratic sneak attack. His speech decrying the Democrats’ tactical maneuver last Friday had been written a full week before.

On Monday, McCain, grasping at straws and worried that there wouldn’t even be a cloture vote at the end of the grim saga, reached for symbolism.

Trying to get just a symbolic vote on banning soft money, McCain made a motion to table the Reid amendment, which was basically just another version of the McCain-Feingold bill.

McCain then announced that he was going to vote against tabling his bill, and urged campaign-finance reformers to do the same, just so there could be a vote count of one sort or another.

“In just a few minutes, the Senate for the first time — let me reiterate that, for the first time — will go on record on the central issue in this debate: Should the Senate ban soft money,” Feingold said. “A simple question. It has a simple answer. And soon, finally, we will see where each senator stands.”

But McConnell wouldn’t even let them have the symbolism. “Let me say to all my colleagues, particularly those on my side of the aisle who share the view of the majority leader and myself on this issue, that this motion to table is a meaningless vote and should reflect that fact. Consequently, I will be urging all of my colleagues to” — joining McCain and Feingold — “vote against tabling.”

Thus, instead of a temperature taking on soft money, the Senate instead recorded a 93-1 roll call, a “meaningless vote,” exactly as McConnell wanted it.

Tuesday came the death blow. Two votes on cloture. The first was on the Daschle substitute, basically just the Shays-Meehan House bill. Sixty votes were needed. All 45 Democrats voted for it, plus McCain, Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John Chafee of Rhode Island, James Jeffords of Vermont, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Fred Thompson of Tennessee.

Fifty-two to 48. Not enough.

Then the vote on cloture on the Reid substitute, basically just the pared-down McCain-Feingold Senate bill. All 45 Democrats voted for it, as did McCain, Collins, Snowe and Thompson — but Specter and Chafee defected.

Three new Republican senators joined the crowd, however: Sens. Sam Brownback of Kansas, William Roth of Delaware and Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas — the latter of whom had been urged to support the bill last week by his younger brother in the House.

Still, when the dust had cleared, it was 53 to 47. Not enough.

But some reform advocates said they were heartened. “Even though passage of a bill was again blocked by the pre-Halloween trick-or-treat parliamentary maneuverings of reform opponents, eight Republican senators have now broken ranks with McConnell, including three new Republicans,” said Scott Harshbarger, president of Common Cause.

Harshbarger added that “other Republican senators are becoming increasingly uncomfortable in following lock-step behind Sen. McConnell and his defense of the corrupt status quo. A group of five additional Republican senators, led by [Nebraska] Sen. Chuck Hagel, signaled their interest in actively engaging reform proponents in an effort to reach agreement on effective reform legislation.”

(Hagel had suggested an amendment on Monday, urging a cap on soft money instead of an outright ban. But the shenanigans of Democrats Daschle, Torricelli and company had prevented him and two other Republicans from offering their amendments.)

“Today’s vote is a huge stride toward passage of a soft money ban,” said the eternally optimistic Feingold. “I am always asked: How do you get to 60 votes for campaign-finance reform? And my answer is ‘One at a time.’ Well today we got three … And we know there are other senators who are still wrestling with this tough issue.”

McCain vowed that the battle would go on. “Never, ever, ever, ever give up,” he said when asked if he had a message for reform supporters out in the hinterlands. “This process is ruining this democracy, and we will win.” He suggested that whatever bounce his presidential campaign has gotten in the polls is because of his advocacy of reform.

But the opponents had both the money and the power and the reality on their side.

“This was the 20th cloture vote we’ve had on this issue,” McConnell noted from the floor. “I think it’s safe to say … that there is no momentum whatsoever for this kind of measure.”

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Did opponents of campaign finance reform get a helping hand in their efforts to derail the McCain-Feingold bill Friday? That’s what some on Capitol Hill are suggesting, and if it’s true, the help came from the unlikeliest of places: two liberal Democrats who claim to be longtime reform advocates.

Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Sen. Bob “The Torch” Torricelli, D-N.J., offered a stronger substitute amendment — which would have replaced McCain-Feingold with the much more comprehensive House version of the bill, offered and passed in the House by Reps. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Marty Meehan, D-Mass. A similar bill failed to get 60 Senate votes in February 1998 and the new amendment, should it replace the bill from Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., will certainly fail again.

The surprising move had Capitol Hill scrambling for answers and the staffs of the four leading campaign finance reformers confused as to what, exactly, Daschle and Torricelli were doing, and what was motivating them to do it.

“We always knew they [the Democrats] were going to try something like this,” McCain said in an interview Friday afternoon. “Everyone in Washington wants to keep the status quo.”

Added McCain’s chief of staff, Mark Salter: “It was a foregone conclusion that as soon as we got close to [the required] 60 votes [needed to push the bill forward toward a vote], Democrats would start jumping ship. Something’s going on out there. Someone must be really scared that we’re close to 60.”

McCain and Feingold had scaled back their campaign finance reform bill in an attempt to make it more palatable and to make opposition to the bill less defensible. The current McCain-Feingold bill includes a ban on party “soft money” — the unregulated, unfettered, limitless reservoirs of cash both parties are flooded with, which McCain has called “the most egregious” stink from the sewer that is the funding of the American political system.

The Shays-Meehan bill, on the other hand, includes a number of provisions — including regulation and a pre-election day ban on “sham issues ads” — which have limited support in the Senate. Reform activists accused Daschle and Torricelli of using parliamentary Machiavelliana to replace a bill that has a chance of passing with one that is all but guaranteed to fail.

It all made for a very confusing day where few knew who was doing what and to whom and why. Daschle’s spinners claimed the Democratic leadership was just trying to get a “test vote” on the issue. But in doing so, Torricelli and Daschle were acting against the wishes of both senators offering the actual bill. Both Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, spoke out on the Senate floor opposing the day’s weird machinations.

Senators and their staffs are full of speculation about Daschle and Torricelli’s motives.

Daschle, who wants to be majority leader within his lifetime, and Torricelli, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), are said to like soft money. Republicans overwhelmingly kick ass on raising the regulated “hard” dollars, but there is rough parity when it comes to the respective abilities of the Democratic and Republican parties in accruing soft money.

Thus, the argument goes, Daschle and Torricelli oppose passage of the McCain-Feingold bill because of their belief that it robs the Democratic Party of its ability to play against the GOP in an area where it remains competitive. And both men want to elect more Democrats in 2000 and regain majority control.

Shamelessly opportunistic Torricelli is possibly the most disliked senator in recent history. He’s a relative newcomer to the Senate, and his DSCC fiefdom is his only position of power. A steady influx of soft money helps him to stay a player. His colleagues might not respect him, but they like the campaign cash he’s a master at raising for them.

Never before has the passage of McCain-Feingold looked this possible. As it stands right now, the McCain-Feingold forces count 53 votes of support, with the addition to their camp, a few days ago, of Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. McCain and Feingold need seven more votes. With at least five vulnerable incumbent Republican senators eyeing their 2000 races warily, there is a chance of enough Republican defections. Those vulnerable Republicans — among them GOP Sens. Rod Grams of Minnesota, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Spencer Abraham of Michigan — are said to worry about how a vote against the bill could be used against them in their races next year.

But, of course, these Republicans are also as dependent as nursing newborn kittens on the campaign money controlled by National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., campaign finance reform’s most steadfast opponent. McConnell has shown a willingness to refrain from helping Republicans who have supported campaign finance reform, such as former Rep. Linda Smith, R-Wash., who lost a race to Sen. Patty Murray last year without much help from the NRSC. McConnell instead channeled rivers of green to Feingold’s challenger, Rep. Mark Neuman, who lost narrowly.

Earlier this week, the Senate Democratic caucus met and reportedly put the screws to Feingold, telling him they wanted to replace McCain-Feingold with Shays-Meehan. Feingold held firm, arguing that Shays-Meehan had already been offered to the Senate, and had failed.

Reportedly, some Democrats argued that if only soft money was banned, gobs of corrupt cash would still continue to flow into the electoral process through the unregulated “sham issue ads” that in theory don’t advocate in favor of one candidate or another, but in practice clearly do. Republican interest groups (like the National Rifle Association or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) are richer and mightier than Democratic ones (including Handgun Control, Inc. and the League of Conservation Voters), they argued. You can’t have true reform without banning those ads, too, they said.

“Are there reform phonies in the midst of all this? Absolutely,” observed Common Cause legislative director Meredith McGehee. “But some of these Democrats passionately believe that just banning soft money isn’t enough.”

Feingold reportedly held firm at the Democratic caucus meeting, however, and McCain-Feingold was offered as it was.

And then on Friday, Daschle and Torricelli offered their amendment to replace McCain-Feingold with Shays-Meehan — a bill that’s bound to fail, as it did in February 1998.

McCain-Feingold’s most recent convert, for example, Sen. Brownback, has said that he could support the strict soft-money ban in McCain-Feingold, but in no way could he vote for Shays-Meehan, since it includes a ban on “sham” issue ads.

The Senate was rife with conspiracy theorizing on Friday. A number of senior Senate staffers noted the surprising amount of time Torricelli and McConnell have spent talking on the floor this week. Since when do Torricelli and McConnell work together? Was a deal struck? Is this all just conjecture? No one, after all, has any evidence of collusion. Just what in the hell was going on?

“It’s a classic Washington moment,” said one senior Senate staffer. “Here you have the [campaign finance reform] ne’er-do-wells from the extremes of both parties finding common cause.”

“The games are flying fast and furious from each side,” says Common Cause’s McGehee.

“It’s a cynical game,” McCain said.

The Senate will return to debate the issue Monday. On Tuesday there will be at least two votes, probably more. McConnell is expected to come at this with amendments on Monday or Tuesday.

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Hopes for an expedited Senate trial and a speedy resolution of the impeachment crisis were dimming Tuesday as senators returned to Washington for the beginning of the 106th Congress.

Only a week ago it seemed that Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was well on his way to cobbling together a bipartisan coalition in favor of a rapid Senate impeachment trial — a formality that could be brought to a speedy conclusion by a procedural vote, after the equivalent of opening arguments. But early Tuesday afternoon Lott met the press to announce that trial proceedings would begin Thursday, while studiously avoiding any mention of how the trial would be conducted or how long it would last.

That’s because he has no idea. Lott didn’t take any questions at his brief press conference, and it’s little surprise. The Senate impeachment trial is Lott’s first real moment in the public spotlight since he assumed the post of party leader when Bob Dole resigned from the Senate in 1996. But Lott’s chances of concluding the mess in a way that will enhance his stature and save the GOP from further misfortune seem to be fading fast. Like so many times before, a new act in the long-standing impeachment drama is about to begin with no script for how it will end.

In a development that should alarm senators on both sides of the aisle, the events in the Senate are progressing much the way they did in the House. Bipartisan sobriety is giving way to extremism and political infighting, and reducing the possibility of a swift resolution to the crisis.

Many House Republicans got on the impeachment bandwagon because they saw it as a free vote — the Senate would rapidly conclude the matter, and certainly stop short of removing Clinton from office. And at first it seemed likely to turn out that way. Bipartisan negotiations to settle the matter quickly got under way. But just as occurred in the House, the Senate Republicans who are most committed to the impeachment program have become increasingly emboldened to fight all attempts at compromise. And neither the members of the Senate Republican leadership nor party elders have seemed able to stem the tide.

Most Republicans recognize that a long, drawn-out trial would do their party great harm for the foreseeable future. Yet few of those senators who have publicly criticized Lott’s efforts seem to have any game plan for avoiding such an outcome. Just as in the House, Republican calls to follow what they call “the constitutional process” have placed them on a course of seemingly unstoppable forward motion. When Henry Hyde sent his 81 questions to President Clinton just after the November election, he set in motion a chain of events that moved ineluctably toward impeachment. Republican criticism of Lott’s efforts to organize a quick trial are propelling the Senate in a similar direction — toward a protracted and possibly agonizing trial in which no one will emerge unscathed.

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To get a sense of the drift of events you only have to look at the numerous options that have been on the table recently. Just after the House voted articles of impeachment, the question for the Senate was whether there had to be a trial, or whether the Senate could just move immediately to censure. Then the issue was whether a trial would have to at least formally start before the Senate could move to censure. In the last few days the choice became trial-lite or a full-blown trial with witnesses. Now even many Democrats are conceding that some witnesses will likely be called. Their only question is how many and for how long.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Besides the Senate’s generally more sober attitude, one of the factors that seemed to make compromise more likely in the Senate was the leadership of Trent Lott. Newt Gingrich’s fall from power — and the leadership vacuum it created — greatly quickened the progress of impeachment in the House. Without the steadying hand of strong leadership, initiative in the House quickly fell to firebrands like Tom DeLay and the stalwarts on the House Judiciary Committee. Lott was supposed to stem the rebellion with his effective party leadership. But he has hardly fared better. Sen. James Inofe of Oklahoma said that the Lott plan would mean “shirking our constitutional duty,” and called it “a whitewash.” On Tuesday night all signs pointed to the conclusion that the process was quickly spinning out of Lott’s control.

The reason for all this is not difficult to understand. Just as it was when the House was considering articles of impeachment against the president late last year, the chorus of pressure and vituperation from the Republican activist base has been intense and unremitting. “If the conservative base feels like Clinton is getting off the hook,” GOP campaign consultant Jay Severin told Salon on Monday, “they’ll never forgive or forget, especially if Lott has something to do with it. There’s no excuse, no excuse.”

The problem for Republicans who are inclined to make a deal is that impeachment and punishment have become for many Republicans an idée fixe — a single dominating obsession, and one that brings together all the diverse complaints and discontents that have characterized American conservatism in the late 1990s. “Conservatives have never had something like this to build a jihad around,” says Severin, and they realize that they may never get this kind of chance again.

Senate Republican staffers who spoke to Salon early this week seemed indifferent to the political repercussions Republicans may face for prolonging the impeachment drama. But then many of those who are most intent on pushing forward come from conservative states where they are unlikely to themselves face consequences for their actions. Senate conservatives don’t seem willing to antagonize their right-wing base to help Republicans from more moderate states, who will likely pay the heaviest political price for a long Senate trial.

But while media accounts of the debate within the Senate have been cast as a struggle between the Republican Party’s moderate and conservative wings, it actually has relatively little to do with ideology. (Lott is not a Rockefeller Republican.) It’s more a struggle between the party’s pragmatic establishment — the people who like to win elections — and its committed activist grass roots. While it is widely, and probably correctly, assumed that most of the Republican Senate moderates would welcome some bipartisan deal to cut short a trial, none of the GOP senators who have been most conspicuous in support of the trial-lite option come from the party’s moderate wing. These include Lott, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Slade Gorton of Washington and Thad Cochran of Mississippi. All come from the party’s conservative wing; Lott and McConnell are among the Senate’s most conservative members.

Despite their protestations about the rule of law and the constitutional process, Republicans too can read the polls. And the dip in GOP favorability ratings over recent weeks has been precipitous. Ever since late December members of the party establishment — regardless of partisan complexion — have been clamoring for some sort of conclusion to the impasse. Rich Galen, executive director of GOPAC — Newt Gingrich’s former organization — sent out a private memo the week after the impeachment that said that Lott, Bob Dole, Democratic Sen. Bob Byrd and former Democratic Sen. George Mitchell should be locked in a room and shouldn’t be let out “until they come up with a solution which stops short of a trial, but goes far enough so the White House can’t claim a victory.”

That sort of thinking is shared by senators like Lott and McConnell, who want to get the Republicans out of the impeachment circus and back to the sort of policy agenda that they will need to position themselves for a solid showing in 2000. As majority leader, it’s Lott’s responsibility to get the Republicans through 2000 with their majority intact. McConnell is the Senate Republicans’ lord of soft money and the head of their campaign committee. Unlike many grass-roots GOP activists, he has his eyes firmly on winning in 2000.

What has received less attention in the impeachment coverage is that 2000 was already going to be a shaky year for the Republicans in the Senate. This is something Lott and McConnell haven’t forgotten. The senators who have to run in 2000 are those who last ran in the Republican jubilee year of 1994. A number of the Republican freshman senators are strongly ideological conservatives from moderate-to-liberal states who just managed to squeak into office on 1994′s Republican tide. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Spencer Abraham of Michigan, both of whom managed only narrow victories in 1994, are in this category, and Democrats have been waiting to get a crack at them for six years. Lott and McConnell want to do everything they can to lay the groundwork to retain those seats. And a long impeachment trial that could range into the middle of the year certainly will not help.

Many on both sides of the aisle also understand that the window of opportunity for a relatively harmonious compromise may be closing. Washington journalists frequently bandy about clichés about how the Senate is more reasoned and bipartisan than the boisterous and rancorous House. And it’s true, but only so far: Senators may be more insulated from public pressures, and more friendships may exist between senators across party lines, but the same passions and pressures that pushed the House to the brink of chaos in December are also present within the Senate.

And once the back-channel negotiations break down into open confrontation it may be very difficult to put the cat back into the bag. If and when witnesses are called, tempers and passions could quickly become too inflamed to find any solution short of a trial, and a vote on conviction or acquittal. As of late Tuesday afternoon, unity among Senate Democrats seemed to be strong and, if anything, strengthening. So removal from office still seems a distant possibility. But the chances for ending the impeachment drama quickly are rapidly diminishing.