House Speaker Dennis Hastert said he will recommend that Representative David Dreier of California to replace DeLay, the Associated Press reported.
josh marshall suggested that dreier was chosen because delay wants to return to the post of majority leader once his case is complete (years from now), and "If DeLay lets someone into the job who actually has the juice to hold it, he might never get it back."
but now it turns out that majority whip roy blunt now has the job:
U.S. Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri was selected by Republican lawmakers to become majority leader, replacing Tom DeLay, who temporarily stepped aside after he was indicted today.
Blunt, 55, the majority whip, was elected to the new post by a vote of the 231-member Republican caucus at a meeting this afternoon in Washington.
so what's up with the sudden cock-block of david dreier? why name him as successor only to give the job to someone else a couple hours later?
could it be that the gop is uncomfortable with the allegations that dreier is a closeted homosexual? (or as john at americablog puts it, a "closeted heterosexual"?)
for example, apparently user geraldy on redstate.org seems to have a problem with it... searching for "dreier" on google news turned up a diary titled On Why Rep. Dreier's Homosexuality is a Concern For Me, which apparently started off with the line "Quite simply, I believe that homosexuality is objectively wrong." no burying the lead there, geraldy. but curiously, clicking the link takes me to an error page stating that i don't have permission to "moderate stories" (which is delightfully ironic if you read "moderate" as an adjective rather than a verb).
naturally, i took a screenshot as evidence that the diary existed, as it no longer seems to be there on redstate. (why was it taken down? because it makes them look like bigots?) ¶
