As much as I disagree with him on politics this yet another example of the "Brain Drain" of the Republican party.
"Brain drain" isn't quite to the point. More like there's a system/anti-system axis in the GOP along with the conservative-moderate one, and Shelby is in the Conservative System quadrant and his replacement is going to be in the Conservative Antisystem quadrant, a firebrand like Mo Brooks.
Shelby's also the classic "workhorse not showhorse" who quietly grinds away in the powerful Appropriations Committee, while he'll be replaced by a hack who spends hours a week on cable news saying inflammatory things, if his replacement is Mo Brooks like we think it will be.
Their voting records will be identical, probably. But the effect on the Senate GOP caucus of having another loudmouth firebrand is more significant than any actual ideological difference.
Good post, but I would also add that this difference in Southern Republicans is also largely generational. Shelby was a contemporary of people like Thad Cochran and Lamar Alexander - Southern Republicans of the 1970s and 1980s who ran/governed as agents of conservative reform against established, dyanstic Dixiecrat patriarchies. Shelby, even though first elected to the Senate as a Democrat himself*, is the last national GOP politician of this sort. There's an added, literary wrinkle here too: Shelby will (most likely) be the last "pre-Boomer" to represent a former Confederate State in the Senate.
*After Shelby retires, I believe the only Southern Democrat-to-Republican "party switchers" left in the Senate will be Cindy Hyde-Smith and John Kennedy, who made the jumps in 2010 and 2007, respectively.
It appears possible that Kennedy retires as well. He was reportedly considering a run for Governor in 2019 and as JBE is term-limited anyways, he might just go for it.
