My initial take on Delay deciding to quit

I've recorded some of my thoughts.

Ok, I'll write some more since traffic is pretty out of control. People are clearly awake and surfing for info.

A couple thoughts.

1. If Delay told Chris Matthews he pulled out of the race because the polls were bad, well then clearly that isn't the reason.

2. Delay has announced he's resigning in May or June, so that's much more telling than his simply not running again. You don't resign because your re-election numbers are bad. You resign to avoid some major embarrassment to yourself or the party. I think Delay knows that another shoe, a big shoe, is going to drop. Whether he was notified about some upcoming additional indictment, or whether he's finally figured out that he's going to jail, something big happened, otherwise he wouldn't be leaving his seat early.

3. Bad news for the Republicans. Rather than take Delay out of the picture, Delay is now an even bigger story. The ongoing investigation is going to make news until the election. And this puts to rest any of the Republicans' snarking about how the prosecutor was a Democrat. He clearly caught delay doing something wrong.

But back to the Republicans, way for Delay to ruin the one year anniversary of the Terri Schiavo fiasco for the religious right. Though it's ironic that last week was Schiavo week since that's when the Republicans really started melting down. And Delay's downfall shows it ain't gonna get any better any time soon.

4. This will at least get Cynthia McKinney out of the news.

5. This hurts congressional Republicans pretty significantly as they lose one of their toughest members, a conservative family-values (well, not, but he pretended) member.

6. A big loss for the religious right as well. They never wanted to admit that sucking up to someone who's corrupt might not be exactly the Christian thing to do. Then again, who ever called the religious right "Christian." They just lost the Congressman from Schiavo. That's gonna hurt.

7. This only furthers the public's perception of Congress being corrupt, and of the corruption scandals being ALL Republican. And both of those most hurt the party that rules the House and the Senate, the Republicans. Time for the Washington Post ombudsman to write another article blaming Democrats.

I think that's it for now. This is just an initial brainstorming. But I would not worry one bit about Delay quitting too soon (i.e., would have been better to have him bringing the Republican party down up until the election). Every day is a new disaster for the Republican party, and today was a pretty good one. We've been waiting for some good luck for 5 years, enjoy it. There will be many more to come between now and November.

PS And major kudos to the folks at CREW who have been dogging this jerk for years. It is not an understatement to say that they share a big part of the credit for what happened today. If you want to give money to lean, mean organizations that actually kick butt and take no prisoners, give to CREW.