“John used to harass me because I would get earmarks—or pork barrel projects—in Mississippi,” he said. “And I would say, ‘Well, yes, John, I’m a senator from Mississippi and we’re the poorest state in the nation.’

“But we’re not anymore, that pork paid off.”

Then Lott made a couple of admissions I found startling.

“But you know what, in my heart I knew he was right,” he said of his pork barrel ways. That’s no way to do business, we shouldn’t be doing all that earmarking—it got completely out of control.

“It got out of control with Republicans and that’s why we are being punished a little bit,” he added. “Because we forgot how we got there, what we believed in, the principles that after 30 years put us in the majority, gave us the White House, the congress, the senate, the house. And then we ran out of ideas...”