A Portent Of Things To Come? - UPDATED

This post is filed under Liberals And Democrats because it is about Liberals and Democrats. So, what else would I blog in a blogsite devoted to the POV of a right wing, knuckle dragging, neandertholic, conservative? But, I digress.

Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) is the presumptive Speaker of the United States House of Representatives when the next congress convenes in January, 2007. The newly elected Majority Leader is Jack Murtha Steny Hoyer. Hoyer IS is NOT a friend of Pelosi, and in fact, lost to Pelosi in the race for minority leader two years ago. This setback for Pelosi brings to mind a question as to her competence to be the Speaker (not that Denny Hastert was any shining example). Too, Pelosi has proposed a number of folk for leadership positions that absolutely call into question her fitness for the job. She has proposed, as a sop to the Congressional Black Caucus the elevation of Alcee Hastings to the chair of the House Intelligence Committee over Jane Harmon. The CBC wants Hastings because of the (gasp) ethics problems of William Jefferson (D-La). This is compounded by the fact that Pelosi doesn't like her fellow Californian Jane Harmon. Ruth Marcus, commenting in the afore linked Washington Post article a week prior to the election notes:

Pelosi is in a box of her own devising. The panel's ranking Democrat is her fellow Californian Jane Harman -- smart and hardworking but also abrasive, ambitious and, in Pelosi's estimation, insufficiently partisan on the committee. So Pelosi, once the intelligence panel's ranking Democrat herself, has made clear that she doesn't intend to name Harman to the chairmanship." [emphasis added]

Insufficiently partisan? For the Intelligence Committee? Isn't that what Pelosi and her fellow Democrats have railed against? What happened to the Democrats cry's for bipartisanship when they lost an election?

In fact, there is some evidence that a Pelosi "speakership" will be frought with multiple problems in getting her liberal agenda through. There are the so called "Blue-Dog" Democrats, 44 by last count, who represent a little less than 1/5^th(19.3832599% to be a little more precise) of the incoming "ruling" Democrats. What are "Blue-Dog" Democrats you ask? Simple, they are moderate to conservative Democrats who ran and were elected as Democrats in spite of (because of?) not running as Liberals. The website Capital Questions states that Blue-Dog Democrats are

The Blue Dogs, [,,,] are less fiercely partisan, and they do not all hail from the South. They seek to build ideological bridges to the Republican side of the aisle, are known for their independence from the leadership of their own party, and tend to be more pragmatic than partisan.

This alone presents an interesting connundrum for Pelosi and the other liberals in the Democratic House Heirarchy. Will her hyperpartisanship (despite her photo-ops with George W. Bush and pronouncements to the contrary) cause her to run up against the Blue-Dogs as often as she will the Republicans? Note also, that many of the "defeated" Republicans were what many conservatives called RINOs (Republican In Name Only).

As I have stated in a previous post, the coming battles may well prove to be a target rich inverionment for this and other bloggers. In fact, my blog-father, a big time "progressive" (he dosen't like the term liberal applied to himself) Marc Cooper, alluding to the missteps by Pelosi regarding her selections and appoitments saying:

In the end, it's a stupid, pointless fight and regardless of its outcome a dumb first move by Pelosi that focuses the debate on flawed ethics rather than on bold leadership.

Cooper also noted that his friend (and fellow liberal progressive Doug Ireland had this to say about Pelosi: "...she just ain't all that smart"

Just who is Nancy Pelosi, the lawmaker from San Francisco with an exagerrated reputation for liberalism? She's an opportunist and a trimmer, who -- just two days after the Democrats re-took both houses of Congress and her Speakership was assured -- proclaimed, "We must govern from the center." When she was first elected to lead the House Democrats six years ago, I investigated Pelosi's background for the L.A. WEEKLY. And one of the things I found out in my digging was that she just ain't all that smart.

Pelosi is catching it from the right as well. Lorie Byrd said (in an article titled "From Moderate To Moonbat In Less Than A Week":

Nancy Pelosi said, “the American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.”

In spite of those words, she backed John Murtha over Steny Hoyer for the position of majority leader, even as conservative talk radio hosts played over and over again a decades old tape of Murtha’s involvement in the Abscam scandal.

Byrd was not the only one on the right (as can well be imagined) who picked up on the faux moderate => to moonbat transformation, Neo-Neo Con notes:

We expected her stand to offend Republicans; that's not news. But it offended Democrats as well, not to mention Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, previously labeled "...probably the most anti-Bush reporter currently assigned to the White House by a major news organization" by John J. Miller of National Review.

And there you have it beloved readers, Nancy Pelosi (DIMocrat - California), incoming Speaker of the United States House of Representatives is an airhead and catching it (and well deservedly so I'm sure) from both the right (which is expected) and the left (which is icing on the cake). I'm sure that this is a portent of things to come and I just can't wait!

Cross Posted At The Real Ugly American.

Posted by GM Roper at November 17, 2006 10:31 AM | TrackBack