Frist Has Lost The Respect Of GOP Colleagues: "He'll Disappear"...

Time Joe Klein April 2, 2006 at 10:17 AM
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There are, I suppose, politicians who have had more dreadful years than Bill Frist, the Tennessee Republican who serves as Senate majority leader. Bill Clinton had his season of Lewinsky. Richard Nixon had Watergate. But rarely has a major politician endured such a spell of relentless day-to-day ugly.

Frist, once esteemed as a citizen-politician, a heart- and lung-transplant surgeon who spent part of each year donating his services in the most desperate parts of Africa, has transformed himself into the ultimate political opportunist. His moves--like last week's ludicrous attempt to hijack the Senate's immigration debate and move it in a punitive, populist direction--have been so clunky that he has lost the respect of his colleagues, especially Republicans. (The Democrats are thrilled by his ineptitude.) "I hear he was a pretty good surgeon," a Republican Senator said last week when I asked how Frist had been as majority leader.

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