Republican Shake-Up/Transition

It was Jimmy Shaker Day for Scott McClellan, who follows the lead of Andrew Card and resigned from White House employ.

“McClellan announced his departure after two years as press secretary saying his departure was right during a “time of transition.” “I have given it my all, sir,” McClellan said.”

Bush said, “It’s going to be hard to replace Scott.”

I find that hard to believe. Mouthpieces are easy to find and there are plenty of folks who can stand up to the press and say nothing of importance every day.

In other news, “a senior White House official told CNN that Rove will no longer focus on policy but will be involved in long-term strategic planning as a deputy chief of staff and a senior adviser. The official said the Joel Kaplan, now a deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, will move to the White House as deputy chief of staff for policy.”

What this means, I’m sure very few people know. I don’t know what impact this will have, if any.

And, in other news, one of Tom Delay’s criminal charges was thrown out of court:

“An appeals court Wednesday upheld a judge’s ruling throwing out a felony conspiracy charge against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay…A lower court judge dismissed a conspiracy charge against DeLay in December, agreeing with defense arguments that the conspiracy law did not cover election code violations in 2002; the Legislature amended the law in 2003…

DeLay, who announced this month that he is resigning his congressional seat, still faces a money-laundering charge and another conspiracy charge stemming from the financing of state legislative races in 2002.”

Is all this in preparation for the November 2006 elections? Perhaps they’ve been listening to Newt Gingrich, who thinks that the midterm elections will be troublesome for the party in power:

“Mr. Speaker, are Republicans in serious danger of losing the House this November?

GINGRICH: I think they’re in very serious danger of having a very bad election this fall. And I think that you have to respect ? when you get poll after poll telling you basically the same thing, you have to respect the right of the American people to say they want change. And the question for the Republicans in the next 90 days is are they going to become the party of real change, and are they going to learn some lessons and get their act together, or are they going to try to go into the fall campaign focusing one district at a time, hoping that somehow incumbency will survive public anger.”