"Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back"

The bombshell this afternoon was Sen. Gregg withdrawing his nomination for Commerce Sec. for the Obama White House. This is great news for Senate Republicans. You could almost hear the last dying gasp of "no-drama Obama" and its for the better of both parties. Obama now is free to nominate someone who will manipulate the census to further the democratic party using guesstimation instead of head counting in hard to reach(Democratic) areas of the country. Of course, it will be up to the administration to determine what areas are too much trouble to actually head count, and when to use projected statistics instead. Transparency at work no doubt. Another cited reason was Sen. Gregg's refusal to go along with Obama's vision for the American economy based on government planning via Keynesian economic theory. I cannot think of a good reason Gregg ever agreed to accept the nomination of an White House in polar opposite of what he believed other than he was promised autonomy behind closed doors and obviously that didn't happen. It was a match made in hell and I think both sides will be better off politically in the end. Obama won't have a prop for a Commerce Sec. with no power, and Gregg can do his work in the Senate where he is so effective and revered. This also adds another GOP vote in the Senate as insurance against Coleman losing his legal challenge to funny-man Franklin.