A clear sign of the decline of the Republican Party in the Senate is the clear cut difference between earlier Republican leaders twenty to thirty years ago–Howard Baker of Tennessee and Bob Dole of Kansas—and recent Republican leadership, including Trent Lott of Mississippi and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
The first two were outstanding Senators, and in many ways, statesmen, while the latter two were and are party hacks, men with an image of prejudiced, narrow minded leadership, neither destined to be regarded in history as outstanding or as statesmen.
When one looks at the Republicans in the Senate today, one can only mourn the decline of a once great party, that had real outstanding leaders and other exceptional Senators, many of them now having passed on, but part of the historic Republican tradition of men of principle, who also knew how to work across the aisle!