God No Longer With Them

Bookending the saga telegraphed three months ago, The Biggest Prick In The World (north of Orlando, anyway) is done serving as The One's John the Baptist and off to become Chicago's new King Herod:

Although no final decision has been made because of family considerations, ABC News has learned that White House officials are preparing for Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to announce on Friday — as Congress adjourns for recess — that he is leaving his post to explore a run for mayor of Chicago.

White House officials expect that President Obama will also name an interim chief of staff, perhaps senior adviser Pete Rouse, at the announcement.

Sources close to Emanuel cautioned that he has yet to pull that last trigger on the decision…

Vice President Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain, Deputy National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina are all said to be on the list of candidates from within the president’s inner circle and already working at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Guaranteed Emanuel's successor will be an Obamunist insider, not unlike how Joseph Goebbels moved his whole family into the Fuehrerbunker (except that he didn't do so in 1942). Gods, after all, don't DO triangulation.

As to Rahmbo, J-Ger gives him a rousing send-off:

It’s easy to get tired of conservatives complaining about media bias, but with news that Rahm Emanuel will soon ride off into the sunset to run Chicago, it seems like a good moment to observe that the public reputation of Emanuel is one of the greatest examples of the Triumph of the Narrative in our modern political world. The narrative is that Rahm Emanuel is the toughest of the political world’s tough guys, shrewd, cunning, dedicated to his chief and exactly the kind of guy you want having your back in a no-holds-barred fight.

But between oft-told tales of ubiquitous, loud, relentless profanity, his sending a dead fish to a pollster, his alleged threatening warning, laced with f-bombs at then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, the tale of the naked shower confrontation with Eric Massa, and the rest, it would be equally easy for a media less charitable to paint a portrait of Emanuel as a maniacal rage-a-holic, a seething hatchet man with few if any principles and a one-man wrecking crew obliterating cooperation, comity, decency and decorum. You’re forgiven if wondering if Rahm had been the chief of staff of a Republican president, he would have stolen the nickname “The Prince of Darkness” from Bob Novak, or whether the media would have gone straight to serial killer metaphors.

Back when Massa was telling the shower tale, I wrote, “Massa declaring that “Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil’s spawn” – Mr. Applegate’s grandson? — and “an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive.” Notice no one in Washington jumped up to deny that characterization; it’s not like any Democrat could honestly say, “oh, come now, that doesn’t sound like our Rahm.” It’s kind of tough to deny allegations of maniacal aggression when one of the most famous stories about Emanuel involves him violently stabbing a table with a steak knife and screaming that all of his enemies would be dead, the most bloodthirsty dinner interruption by a Chicagoan since Al Capone went Babe Ruth on his underling’s noggin.”

Really, will any parent tell their child, ‘when you grow up, I want you to be just like Rahm Emanuel’?