Remember Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire RINO who accepted a top job in Barack Obama’s Politburo and then melodramatically refused to actually take the job, like some emotionally unstable goth teen? Well he is back, sort of! The grandstanding old cocksucker went on CNBC to bitch about “Cash for Clunkers,” a government rebate plan with broad bipartisan support and popular acclaim that accomplishes the neat trick of getting polluting old jalopies off the road while keeping the car companies alive during these last tough months of the Great Recession — because this brief and helpful program will obviously cause the United States to become a “banana republic in 10 years.” This is what Judd Gregg said, on teevee. MORE »

Judd Gregg, a Republican senator from New Hampshire who was going to be Barack Obama’s secretary of commerce before he remembered that had already mortgaged his balls to Mitch McConnell, has fallen prey to another one of the president’s dastardly bipartisan schemes. He has accepted an invitation to attend some sort of “fiscal responsibility summit” next week. Oh noes! MORE »

Why can’t Obama find a Commerce Secretary? Uhh … Abe Lincoln’s fault? Hooray for our favorite daytime teevee president! [YouTube]

• JUDD GREGG IS DESTROYING OUR CONVERSATION: Only a few more hours until Jonah Goldberg steals the news by being named Commerce Secretary, so we better get all of our “Judge Dredd” posts in. We’ve entered the second phase of this nasty story, where the various anonymous partisans go crazy with the leaks: “WASHINGTON (CNN) — A Democratic source close to the Obama White House said Thursday that Judd Gregg ‘campaigned for the job’ — that the New Hampshire senator had asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to approach the president about the Commerce post.” A Republican source has responded that in fact Barack Obama kidnapped Judd Gregg’s children and threatened to feed them arugula until Gregg accepted the position. [CNN]

A Democratic Hill staffer with a clear “liberal bias” writes to TPM, offering a taste of what we can expect from the Internet in a post-Gregg world: “It’s hard not to think that Gregg’s withdrawal, with the grumbling about the census and the stimulus, was not timed to cause the most damage possible to the Obama administration. Releasing the statement just as Obama took the stage in Peoria was clearly designed to undermine the President’s event. The fact he scheduled a presser only seems to confirm it… MORE »

While we haven’t yet turned on CNN to hear the Best Political Team On Earth tell us what we think about the politics of what we think about Sen. Judd Gregg’s decision to withdrawn his Commerce Secretary nomination, we think he’s coming off like an idiot. Other people who think Judd Gregg is coming off like an idiot include Robert Gibbs, and Judd Gregg. MORE »

GREGG WITHDRAWS: What the hell? Token cabinet Republican #3, Commerce Secretary-designate Judd Gregg, has suddenly withdrawn, according to your favorite Matt Drudge. His reason? That he doesn’t agree with Obama on basic economics. Another win for the vetting team! [Drudge]

Oh no Judd Gregg is also a laughable failure now, after deciding to become a communist for Obama the other day. What a French Gay! Let’s examine the evidence, HMM? MORE »

Yay a new era has dawned in Washington, bipartisanship forever, etc! After Barack Obama’s pudgy comic foil had to renounce the Latino Consolation Prize due to a corruption investigation, people wondered who could possibly replace Bill Richardson. And then the name “Judd Gregg” was floated, and people said, “well, he was pretty good in Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” plus he was a Republican, which meant that sneaky Barack Obama could get Gregg’s Democratic governor to appoint a Democrat to replace him in the Senate without a single Republican noticing! MORE »

Did you hear about how Barack Obama might appoint a Republican senator to Commerce Secretary? Such brilliance and political genius! It has never occurred to another human on the planet, ever, that some political advantage might be gained by eliminating an opposition-party Senate seat from a state controlled by a sympathetic governor. MORE »

• Senate approves fences and barriers for the southern border as well as restrictions for the guest-worker program. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.): “Good fences make good neighbors. Fences don’t make bad neighbors.” [WP, NYT, WSJ]
• New details about Gen. Michael Hayden’s “highly classified world” are “forcing lawmakers to reexamine a man many of them have known for years”; last-minute briefings to lawmakers on the Intelligence Committees “have smoothed what might have been a contentious path toward confirmation” and a declassified list shows select members were briefed 30 times on surveillance programs since 9/11. [WP, NYT, NYT, USAT, USAT, WSJ]
• Tuesday’s election results may preview a “brewing unrest that could threaten incumbents of both parties in the November elections”; a “broader disaffection” is noted. [WP, NYT]
• Bush echoes past campaign themes in speech at RNC fundraiser: “We are the party of the future, and our candidates will be running against the party of the past — a party that offers no new ideas like the Republican Party, a party that can only offer opposition.” [NYT]
• Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) says Bush is not appropriately funding the National Guard order: “A lot are going to be sitting in cars that don’t run and planes that don’t take off.” [USAT]
• House ethics committee opens investigations of Reps. Robert Ney (R-Ohio), William Jefferson (D-La.), and Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.). [WP, NYT]
• Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman are bidding for a multibillion-dollar contract to provide border security. [NYT]

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