Right now, President Clinton and his fellow Democrats are smiling.

“The American people have sent us a message that would break the eardrum of anyone who was listening,” Clinton said the day after election results sent shockwaves through the country.

Someone needed to take the blame for the Republican party. Enter Newt Gingrich, Republican fall guy. A man whose respectability was recently ranked the same as a used car salesman. Who could be better suited for the position.

In a phone call to admirer and friend Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, Gingrich was told that “in football, when your team loses, they bench you, the quarterback. It’s painful — I’ve been there —but that’s just the way it is.”

Indeed, Gingrich is the quarterback for his party. If you repeatedly drop the ball in football, you get taken out of the game. In politics, if you insist on investigations that are extremely unpopular with voters and don’t accomplish any thing except partisan bickering, you lose elections.

Gingrich’s career is a lot like the Cyclone football season. It started out bright, and the future looked very optimistic, but it went downhill from there.

In 1994, Republicans made sweeping gains in both the House and Senate. But after the government shutdown, Gingrich’s popularity and job approval rating plummeted.

Instead of 42-7, the most recent defeat for Gingrich was 223-211 as Democrats picked up five House seats.

After hearing of Gingrich’s resignation, spin-doctors and politicians alike remained silent because they were so shocked. Why is this such a big surprise?

Ordinary Americans knew it was going to happen, and even the Daily predicated it in a recent editorial.

The American people got fed-up with the partisan brouhaha and made a change.

Gingrich should not bear the responsibility alone. The Republican party is to blame for their refusal to listen to the public.

Instead of doing the work of the people they represent, they wasted time with party politics.

Gingrich did the right thing by putting the party before himself.

This way, new leadership will emerge, and the party can begin licking its wounds.

The shake-up will be good for the American people. Speaker of the House hopeful Bob Livingston R-La. has pledged more bi-partisan cooperation and says that public opinion polls will be a factor in the Ken Starr investigation.

It is about time.