Morning doozie!

Former House Speaker and increasingly dirty-looking Republican Tom DeLay announced this morning that he will resign from Congress in a few weeks. Some combination of the bad news that a key aide had plead guilty to corruption charges and the increasingly powerful Democratic challenger (polls put the race at about 50-50) changed his mind about his future prospects.

Senior House Republicans have been saying for several weeks that DeLay would make his decision based on what was best for the GOP. Indeed, Democratic House campaign officials have been hoping to face DeLay in November, considering him the weakest Republican candidate they could hope for.

He's already won the primary, so I guess that (he know or hopes that) the GOP can appoint a replacement candidate with less baggage (he's chainging residency to free up his slot), although I don't know how likely they are to find anybody as well known as Dem Nick Lampson, who's a former Congressman displaced by redistricting...

(via NPR)

Update: appears there's some political gaming behind this move -- if DeLay resigns early enough (rather than just not running for reelection), there could be a special election to fill his seat, which changes the rules and could make things harder for Lampson. Political manipulator to the end...