Will America never get its precious Commerce Secretary? Obama's latest Commerce nominee, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, has just withdrawn from consideration. Maybe they shouldn't have picked a guy who opposes Obama on everything?

Obama's first Commerce nominee was Bill "Beard" Richardson, who withdrew because of an ethics investigation. So they went and picked Gregg. The major benefit of having him would have been, hey, one less Republican in the Senate! The drawbacks, though, turned out to be more important. Namely no Democrats like the guy, and he, in turn, just does not like the Commerce Dept., or Obama's plans for it! He opposed the stimulus package and he opposed Obama's plan to have the Census director start reporting to the White House. Turns out this was not a recipe for success:

"It has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the census there are irresolvable conflicts for me," Gregg said in a statement to be released by his office. "Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns."

So now Obama can either keep going further down the same path and nominate George W. Bush himself as Commerce Secretary; or, nominate a non-bearded Democrat. Or hell just let Rahm take care of it, cut the bullshit. [WP, NYT]