The American Spectator

p> TRIPPI FIRED br> News that former Vermont Gov. Howie Dean was pushing aside longtime political adviser Joe Trippi for Al Gore ‘s former Senate chief of staff and consigliere Roy Neel began leaking late Wednesday afternoon, after a number of congressman had heard the news from Dean himself on a conference call. /p>

In a hastily called meeting at Dean campaign headquarters, Trippi told tearful staff members that he was out, despite his boss’s insisting that Trippi was staying on.

Trippi was credited with molding Dean into the national candidate he had become until the Dean team failed to stem the negative press that inundated Iowa and led to their candidate’s downfall in the polls. Dean’s decision may be the death knell of his campaign. Trippi was viewed by many of Dean’s Internet and volunteer supporters as the visionary leader of the Dean phenomenon.

Dean apparently had made the decision on Neel, a longtime Gore adviser, in the hours after his Iowa meltdown. In Dean’s conversations with Gore over the weekend before the New Hampshire primary, the former vice president suggested Neel as the man to get the campaign’s organization back on track.