Moe Lane

Oh, this should be entertaining.  Apparently, NARAL is upset that Nancy Pelosi (who is technically, supposedly, theoretically supposed to be some sort of, well, Roman Catholic) said “I don’t believe in abortion on demand” and “I don’t believe that abortion is a form of birth control or contraception” – while still suggesting that Republican men are some sort of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals yadda yadda yadda, mind you.  Alas for the House Minority Leader, such doubleplusungood crimespeaks are dangerous agitprop and virulent memetic contagions that must be stamped out through a healthy dose of self-criticism and public abasement. (more…)

Gee, it doesn’t sound quite so reasonable when I put it that way, huh?

House Democrats are adding a controversial new demand to the government funding talks: ending a 19-year old ban on gun violence research by the federal government.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced Thursday that Democrats will insist that the research ban be removed from law as part of the $1.1 trillion omnibus that Congress needs to pass by next week to fund the government.

…Or what, Nancy? You gonna shut down the government or something? Count the damn votes, madam. Spoiler warning: you don’t have a majority in the House.  You haven’t had one in four years. And when you did have one you threw it away on passing Obamacare.

So… no.

I am sometimes a petty person. I admit this. For example, this made me laugh:

When Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, lost her speaker’s gavel in the 2010 Republican rout of the House, she was forced to reinhabit Mr. Boehner’s prior office as he moved into her spot.

The House superintendent replaced carpets, peeled the paint off the walls and repainted them, and replaced the curtains, all in the name of smoke odor eradication. This was not at Ms. Pelosi’s request. “We are all paying the price for Speaker Boehner’s smoking,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi.

(more…)

Now there’s something you don’t see every day: me agreeing with the former Speaker of the House. Alas, while the article starts off great with the headline (“Pelosi: GOP ‘out to get’ Planned Parenthood“) it quickly devolves into a desperate attempt by Nancy Pelosi to ignore the fact that she’s an unrepentant, knowing heretic* when it comes to abortion. Such is the life of a Catholic Democrat, these days; their own party won’t let them follow the dictates of their religion and they can’t even visibly show their discomfort with that.

But I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking, But the GOP isn’t out to get Planned Parenthood! Wrong. What we have here is a disconnect between some – not all; some – of our politicians, and us. As a good, general rule of thumb it is safe to assume that the average Republican is sound on the subject of ending the practice of baby-harvesting for commercial purposes (or, indeed, any purpose at all).  That certain of our legislators have not yet internalized that realization is, indeed, a problem; but thankfully it is one that can be resolved via the mechanism of going up to said legislators and screaming in their faces until they get the message. (more…)

John Fund asks “With Harry Reid Gone, Why Is Nancy Pelosi Hanging On?” I assume that that’s because John Fund likes to ask rhetorical questions. Isn’t it obvious?

She may have been a rotating disaster as Speaker of the House, and everything that I’d want in a House Minority Leader, but that’s still an identity, right? – Because the moment Nancy Pelosi retires she becomes just another former politician that nobody has to flatter or defer to. Some people have the strength of character to cleanly retire from politics (for example, George W. Bush). Others do not. And it’s not all that shameful. Power is a heck of a drug, after all.

There is a flaw in this argument:

“It’s certainly possible that if Democrats—there’s 435 seats up every two years; Democrats win a majority— [Nancy Pelosi] would become the Speaker of the House, but it’s terribly unlikely, although possible,” [KCBS Political Analyst Marc] Sandalow said.

That’s because of the way the districts are redrawn, which happens every 10 years, based on the U.S. Census.

(more…)

…it apparently was Planned Parenthood:

Tensions are roiling between Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi over an unusual point of contention for the two top Democrats: abortion policy.

The fight is serious enough that it could kill the House Minority Leader’s ambitious deal with Republicans on the so-called “doc-fix.”

(more…)

Check out the House Minority Leader’s reaction to being told that Barbara Boxer was retiring.  Dear Lord, but this is almost making me feel embarrassed on Nancy Pelosi’s behalf. (more…)

Just what the partisan hack ordered, in fact.

Behind [House Minority Leader Nancy] Pelosi [75 years old] are Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), who is 75, and Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who at 74 has joked that he is the “baby” in the leadership team. This trio have held the top three spots in leadership for nine years, with Pelosi and Hoyer in the top spots for a dozen years.

It’s not that they’re old; it’s that they’ve all grown barnacles by now.  And the best part? They think that they’re doing something right.

It says something about the general, blessed uselessness of the Democratic caucus right now that this paragraph os what leaped out at me:

…what was probably the most dramatic leadership vote in the Democratic caucus, the contest for majority leader in 1976, 38 years ago. The winner was Texas’ Jim Wright, who would go on to become speaker after Tip O’Neill retired 10 years later. The loser was California’s Phil Burton. The vote was 148-147. Burton spent the rest of his life — he died suddenly in 1983, at 56 — trying to track down those who had committed to him but cast their secret ballot for Wright.

That sounds like the backstory for a pretty good political thriller. Or maybe a television episode.  God knows that nothing that House Democrats are doing right now qualifies…

Moe Lane

PS: Did they ever find out who did wrong by Burton?

Dana Milbank begins the Long Slog:

There are five 2014 House races still to be decided before we can answer a question of historical interest:

Was this the worst election for House Democrats since 1928? Or was it merely their worst since 1946?

Either way, the results do not reflect well on the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi — a conclusion that seems to have escaped Nancy Pelosi.

(more…)

Chris Cillizza is not quite gobsmacked:

Nine days ago, Democrats lost (at least) eight of their seats and their majority in the Senate.  On the House side, the party dipped to at their lowest level — in terms of raw number of seats held — since World War II. How did the party react to this rejection from the American public? By preparing to re-elect every single one of their top Congressional leaders, of course!

…but he can see gobsmacked from where he currently sits.  Basically, the Democrats are not going to change their leadership cadre.  This despite the utter disaster that befell the legislative branch of their party last week, mind you; and it’s not just that the Democrats lost the Senate and got rocked back on their heels in the House. It’s that Democrats in the state legislatures likewise got hammered.  I don’t believe in permanent Republican majorities than I believed in permanent Democratic ones, but one of the major things standing in the way of a new Democratic majority is their leadership cadre.  Robert Tracinski over at the Federalist noted that the Democratic party’s recruitment successes collapsed when it became clear that all those new, shiny Red State Democrats were there to rubber stamp urban liberal Democratic agendas. As long as the people who support that agenda still run the Democratic party, moving the needle again is going to be hard for the Democratic rank-and-file. (more…)