The Three Stooges

Roy Blunt of Missouri, David Dreier of California and Eric Cantor of Virginia are now fronting for the Bugchaser.

The front frontman is Roy Blunt:

The end result puts the House in the hands of Blunt - a 55-year-old Bible Belt conservative not unlike DeLay - rather than in those of a 53-year-old urban Californian who is a reliable conservative vote on economic issues but opposed banning same-sex marriages.

"Blunt is a standard partisan, more of a DeLay Jr. Dreier would have been a little bit daring for them, a little too thoughtful, too independent. ... It's not surprising they wouldn't quite want him to have the keys to the kingdom," said Jim Pinkerton, a former GOP White House aide who is now a fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Smokin' Roy Blunt, of course, is the God-fearing family man who believes in the sanctity of marriage. As reported in the Columbia Daily Tribune:

In June 2002, the congressman announced that he and his wife, Roseann, were separating after 35 years of marriage. Sixteen months later, Blunt married Abigail Perlman, a lobbyist for the parent company of Philip Morris.

Blunt declined to talk about what led to his divorce, saying it was a personal matter and was "unfortunate."

Besides causing personal pain, the turmoil has taken a political toll. Last summer, The Washington Post reported that only hours after Blunt assumed the whip's job, he quietly tried to insert a provision benefiting Philip Morris into a bill creating a new Department of Homeland Security.

(Note to F.M. "Jeff" Jarvis: No matter how you try, that one wasn't the 9/11 Commission's fault either.)

Eric Cantor is the shill who tried, and failed, to enact the DeLay Rule. Blunt and Cantor are also friends of Abramoff.

Dreier, who was originally tapped for DeLay's position, lost out when radical right fundamentalists heard that he was a "friend of Powerline."