Considering that only a dozen votes needed to switch in order to provide a different outcome, and 95 Democrats in the House voted against it, critics are now wondering why couldn't House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have assured a different outcome considering how important she said its passage was? Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., told me yesterday that he felt no pressure at all to vote for the bill.
Hmm....that is decisive leadership by Nancy. More proof she should go. And I am not the only one to think so:
Let me go on the record today with an opinion I've held for a while, but hadn't yet expressed publicly: Nancy Pelosi needs to go as Speaker of the House.
However, the speech was incredibly inappropriate. At a moment when the Speaker should have been rallying the entire membership of the House to pull together as Americans and solve the crisis before them, Pelosi chose instead to use her pulpit to lay blame and point fingers. There is certainly plenty of blame to go around, and some finger pointing is going to have to occur as we decide what specific mistakes were made and how we can avoid repeating them. But yesterday was not the time.
Yesterday was a time for statesmanship and gravitas, qualities that are critical in the individual who is only a few degrees away from the presidency, and who is vested with representing the entire body of the House of Representatives. In our two party system, there is no way to leave partisan politics out of the Speaker's role, but Pelosi acts more like a House majority or minority leader, or a whip - or even like the DNC Chair - than she does like the great Speakers of yore, like Sam Rayburn and Tip O'Neill.
Certainly those guys acted as members of their own parties, But Democrat O'Neill and Republican Ronald Reagan, for example, had an underlying respect for one another, and were cordial "after 5pm," as Reagan once said. This meant that when necessary, the two parties could reach compromise in the House with respect for the work they needed to get done. I sort of doubt that there is a Republican on the planet who would enjoy sharing a beer with Nancy Pelosi. Heck, there probably aren't even many Democrats who would consider that much of a good time.
And that from a liberal....
