Trent Lott advises Republicans to fix Obamacare, not kill it

Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, unlike many of his former Republican colleagues, believes the Senate shouldn't throw over Obamacare. "One of the things I'm looking for is, who would be the leader in the House or the Senate, Republicans and Democrats, that would try to find a way to do some improvements without demolishing the bill," he said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Thursday.

Moreover, Lott, who was majority leader from 1997-2001, called technical corrections to laws "routine," an important point, given that the Supreme Court will hear a case based on what the Obama administration and Democrats say amounts to a typo in the text of the bill. The law says the federal government will give subsidies to eligible consumers who buy insurance from an exchange "established by the State." The suit interprets that line to mean that subsidies are not available to customers in the dozens of Obamacare exchanges that were established by the federal government. Fixing that language would remove the jeopardy to the law for this particular challenge, but it seems unlikely that many Republicans in the Senate are jumping at the chance to save the law in the way that Lott apparently is.

And although he didn't say this directly, Lott also apparently doesn't see his cohort as particularly promising presidential fodder, saying Republicans needed a viable candidate, "I hope it's a Governor of former Governor. Period. No Senator." Sorry, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.