"The Washington Prowler" writes at The American Spectator's blog:

There are rumors floating about DC today that former Sen. Phil Gramm is about to be named Treasury Secretary to replace Secretary John Snow.

There were rumors earlier this week that Gramm was being offered a job as "senior counselor" to the President to oversee Congressional relations, among other things.

Good Christ. If this happens, let's just change the name of the country to the Republic of Texas and be done with it.

The Prowler does add:

Gramm's name have been floated a number of times over the past 18 months and nothing much has come of it.

(Wikipedia confirms that "rumors were rampant" of a Gramm appointment to Treasury at the outset of the second Bush term.)

I can think of at least one reason why appointing Gramm might not be a politic move:

... Enron Corp. used its vast web of political connections to win December 2000 passage of commodities trading legislation that helped the company shield its energy trading activities from government scrutiny....

The legislation reducing government oversight of energy trading was muscled through Congress -- without a Senate committee hearing -- with the aid of U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas. Gramm was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over the legislation he co-sponsored, but he chose to bypass his committee, and the bill was quietly tacked onto a "must-pass" appropriations bill late in the session. Gramm's wife, Wendy Gramm, also aided Enron's rise to power. As chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, she pushed through a key regulatory exemption on Jan. 14, 1993, just as she was about to leave office. Five weeks later, she joined Enron's board of directors....

There's more Gramm sleaze here.

In a rational world, reasonable people would know that a Gramm appointment was out of the question -- but our political establishment has concluded that questions about anything in a Republican's past short of premeditated murder at point-blank range should be written off as a "kerfuffle," so I'm not sure we should discount the Gramm rumors altogether.

Oh, and Jonah Goldberg wrote a couple of days ago at The Corner,

THERE'S STILL TIME...

For Phil Gramm to decide to run in '08.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Thanks for the heads-up, Jonah.