DeLay officially steps down

You can tell that this is simply face-saving with him, as he deftly avoids the indignity of getting booted out by his own party.

DeLay's about-face came amid growing pressure from fellow Republicans who were concerned about their own political futures in the wake of this past week's guilty pleas by lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

[...]DeLay acted hours after a small vanguard of Republicans circulated a petition calling for leadership elections and citing DeLay's legal problems as well as his long ties to Abramoff.

As they say, this is obviously linked to the Abramoff convictions earlier this week. The reason is that before the Abramoff case threatened to spill over and tar a bunch of Republican Congressmen, DeLay was an isolated case where the Repubs could argue that he was being attacked for political reasons. Now that Abramoff has admitted guilt and DeLay had ties to those deals, there's no way they can argue that, as well as the fact that the only defense now is to admit to some bad apples and make a show of cutting them out, starting with DeLay.

Republican rules permit an election to fill the vacancy, and aides to Reps. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Charles Bass of New Hampshire said on Friday that the lawmakers' petition would allow the rank and file to pick new leadership quickly.

"The developments with Abramoff have "brought home the fact that we need not just new leaders but a course correction," Flake said.

Rep. Heather Wilson (news, bio, voting record) of New Mexico, a perennial election-year target of Democrats, said she did not want DeLay to return as majority leader.

And GOP Rep. Jim Ramstad (news, bio, voting record) of Minnesota said, "It's clear that we need to elect a new majority leader to restore the trust and confidence of the American people."

Republicans are definitely going to make a show of how this is isolated and how hard they work to stem corruption and how in reality, you have more reason to trust them than Democrats. You can't expect them to sit in the corner and take a whipping quietly.

To read more about the DeLay story on Three Wise Men:
Looks Like the end of DeLay
Revolutionary New Legal Strategy!
Grand Jury: Evidence is There
DeLay indictment?

Some new stories about the DeLay indictments:
Houston Chronicle
Washington Post

And of course to get continuous coverage on this issue: Delaywatch.com