Unease in the House Majority
Tags: 2010 Campaign, Nancy Pelosi.
Click here to get Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority by Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan.
We’ll see where this leads:
Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) moves since the November elections have shaken up some of her colleagues, with some looking over their shoulders and others worried about how the Speaker will lead her expanded majority in 2009.
Next year is regarded as the biggest legislative opportunity for Democrats since 1993, the last time they controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress.
But not all Democrats are celebrating. Liberals are worried about Pelosi’s vow to govern “from the middle” and centrists are concerned that the make-up of the House leadership team has shifted noticeably to the left.
Contrary to the jubilation of House Democrats after they regained control of the lower chamber after the 2006 elections, there is some unease among members heading into the 111th Congress.
“Everybody I talk to, everybody’s worried about something,” said a Democratic staffer.
Pelosi’s effort to make some Democrats anxious could be a calculated maneuver as she seeks to maximize the effectiveness of her caucus heading into 2009. Pelosi’s hard-charging tone and decisions over the past month have sent a message to her colleagues: Don’t get too comfortable.
Indeed, don’t get comfortable. While Pelosi is without a doubt the worst Speaker of the past 50 years (and perhaps much longer), she is adept at the primary liberal game – gaining and retaining power. Pelosi, it should be remembered, essentially obtained her current position via illegal campaign contributions to Democratic House candidates who then owed her big time once the Democrats gained the majority…and who are now being primed to take over key House positions by Pelosi in a gambit to make the House a mere rubber stamp of the Speaker’s. Which is a doubly bad prospect given the fact that Pelosi is a cipher – a mere regurgitator of liberal/left platitudes who wouldn’t know an actual idea if it fell on her. Better for the country if she were a leftwing ideologue determined to push through a clear agenda – at least everyone would know what we’re up against and be able to work with that reality…now we don’t know when she’ll jump ship on a program or what scatterbrained ideas might pass in review on the whim of an ill-informed Speaker.
One of the brightest prospects for the GOP is our chances in the House – and even if we don’t end up scoring a majority in 2010, we can still do a great service to our nation by picking up 25 or 30 seats: that kind of loss might convince the Democrats to unseat Pelosi for the 2011 House session.
Thank you for visiting Blogs For Victory. If you enjoy our content, please consider making a donation to help us cover the costs of our servers.Mark Noonan is co-author (with Matt Margolis) of Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority. He also blogs at Nevada News and Views. Follow Mark on Twitter.
9 Responses to “Unease in the House Majority”
Caucus of Corruption
“Dennis Hastert, who served eight years as the most lamentable Speaker of the House in the chamber’s history, began a slow exit from the Congress Friday. It was on that day that the former wrestling coach, who attained the speakership not on the basis of any political skills or policy expertise but because he was willing to front for the unpalatable Tom DeLay, announced his decision not to seek reelection from the Illinois district that has elected him since 1986.
Among the fifty men and one woman who have held the speakership since a German-born pastor named Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg filled the position for the First Congress, there have been more than a few disappointments. Aside from the indicted, the disgraced and the disreputable, there have been the indefensible — like Howell Cobb, who used his pre-Civil War speakership to promote the extension of slavery. Cobb would eventually find his true calling as the speaker of the Provisional Confederate Congress and the acting president of the southern states that seceded from the U.S. in treasonous defense of human bondage.
Could the shambling, ineffectual and frequently inarticulate Hastert really have been a worse Speaker of the House than a crude proponent of slavery, or a crook like Jim Wright or a conniving partisan like Newt Gingrich? Absolutely.
Even the worst of his predecessors had respect for the House as a institution of Congress, the separate but equal legislative branch of the federal government. Hastert displayed no such understanding or commitment. He made the House during the three congresses in which his speakership coincided with the administration of George Bush and Dick Cheney — ironically, a man as a House member in the Reagan era coveted the post of Speaker and co-authored a history of the position — something less than it was ever meant to be.
The House that Hastert built was neither a check nor a balance on the excesses of the Bush presidency. Hastert’s House allowed the president to go to war and then initiate the long-term occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan without declarations, it rubber-stamped the administration’s anti-Constitutional assaults on civil liberties, it made no complaint when the president attached signing statements that effectively exempted him from hundreds of laws that had been passed by the chamber.
Hastert’s House was a crude and unworkable place, where members who sought to uphold their oaths to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic” were held up to ridicule and forced to hold hearings on issues involving the most extreme abuses of presidential authority — lying to the Congress and the American people about matters of war and peace — in basement rooms.
As a man, Hastert was as cruel and uncaring about the fate of the American people he was uniquely empowered to serve as he was about the interns dispatched to the office of Florida Congressman Mark Foley. Hastert’s objection to the use of federal funds to rebuild predominantly African-American sections of New Orleans where thousands of homes and lives had been wrecked by Hurricane Katrina — “It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed” — was so brutal that he was forced to publicly amend his comments with a claim that “I’m not advocating that the city be abandoned or relocated.” But the lack of an adequate response to the needs of New Orleans by Hastert and his colleagues would confirm that the Speaker’s initial reaction was a truer expression of his sentiments than the apologia.
Ultimately, however, the greatest horror of Hastert’s House was not confirmed by its specific failures to serve the American people who most needed a Congress to counter the malignant neglect of the Bush-Cheney administration. Rather, it was defined by the remaking of an essential legislative chamber as nothing more than an extension of the executive branch of the government. The damage to the Congress has been severe, as has been the damage to the Republic.
Since the opposition Democrats were handed control of both the House and Senate in the realigning election of 2006, some steps have been taken to restore a proper balance. There have been more debates. A few committees have begun to investigate the lawlessness of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other members of the administration. There is even talk, among the more principled members of the chamber, of censuring or impeaching the president or vice president. But the work is far from done. The House of current Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains too careful, too deferent and too dysfunctional in its dealings with a unitary executive branch. On most matters, President Bush and Vice President Cheney continue to get their way without much of a fight — witness the decision of the Congress to allocate more money for the continuation of the Iraq occupation than the White House had requested. And the administration continues to treat the House and Senate with a disdain that is writ large across radical demands of executive privilege.
Even as Hastert prepares to exit Congress, the threat posed by his approach to the speakership continues. That threat is rooted in the prospect that he has created a model for House leadership — or the lack thereof — that will be reasserted at future moments when the legislative and executive branches are under the common control of a single party. Indeed, if a House led by Pelosi were to be as subservient to a White House occupied by Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as was the House of Hastert to the administration of Bush and Cheney, the illusionary “leader” from Illinois will continue to define how the separation of powers operates long after he exits the Capitol.
There is a cautionary tale here for Pelosi. She should not let this remain the era of the weak Congress that it was under the fundamentally flawed leadership of Dennis Hastert. She should make it clear, to Bush an to his successor, that with Hastert gone, the speakership and the House will be restored to its proper place in the federal hierarchy.”
THAT was the worst speaker of the house.
“Pelosi, it should be remembered, essentially obtained her current position via illegal campaign contributions to Democratic House candidates”
And I suppose that you have enough evidence for your claim to go to court?
Or are you engaging in libel and defamation of character?
How many promises has Pelosi filled that were passed to the dumb masses during the 2006 campaign?
Don’t give me that Republican filibuster BS, since the legislation was not even proposed?
End Iraq war? – no proposal, just silly no confidence votes and non-binding resolutions.
Common sense legislation for energy – no proposal, while Americans paid $4-$6/gal of gasoline.
Responsible spending? – More pork, earmarks and more appropriations for Iraq.
Voted to continue “spying on Americans” as the rhetoric goes.
Pelosi/Reid have been a miserable failure. Face it liberals you are just kool-aid consumers and part of the dumb masses that await with baited breath for the next tidbit talking point.
You claim that there hasn’t been any comprehensive energy proposals? This is one. And YES, it’s from this congress.
H.R.6
Title: An Act to move the United States toward greater energy independence and security, to increase the production of clean renewable fuels, to protect consumers, to increase the efficiency of products, buildings, and vehicles, to promote research on and deploy greenhouse gas capture and storage options, and to improve the energy performance of the Federal Government, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Rep Rahall, Nick J., II [WV-3] (introduced 1/12/2007) Cosponsors (198)
Related Bills: H.RES.66, H.RES.839, H.RES.846, H.RES.873, H.RES.877, H.R.453, H.R.632, H.R.1705,
H.R.1721, H.R.1933, H.R.2635, H.R.2701, H.R.3221, H.R.4773, S.103, S.193, S.357, S.962, S.987, S.992,
S.1321, S.1419, S.1656, S.1657, S.1771
Latest Major Action: Became Public Law No: 110-140 [GPO: Text, PDF]
Note: Omnibus energy legislation.
You claim that they’ve done nothing on Iraq? See this:
S.J.RES.15
Title: A joint resolution to revise United States policy on Iraq.
Sponsor: Sen Biden, Joseph R., Jr. [DE] (introduced 5/25/2007) Cosponsors (None)
Latest Major Action: 5/25/2007 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
Next time, put your money where your mouth is.
ps. I’d like all the neocons out there to notice how, even though I was correcting this person on his statements, I refrained from attacking his character. Could you guys try that for once, please? Thankyou.
Atheistmule,
Pelosi promised COMMON SENSE legislation to keep oil and gas prices down and not pie in the sky renewable fuels where infrastructure is practically non-existent and this fuel efficiency is not a viable replacement to meet the nation’s needs. That is what I was referring to and not the general title of energy, my mistake. Green house gas capture? Get serious. All of what they proposed does nothing to reduce the cost of gasoline and oil which is what they promised.
Pelosi also promised to END THE WAR.
Next time look at the specifics promised by liberals and not general BS they tried to “pass”. The dumb masses may accept their cheap attempts and talking point rhetoric but they also do not scrutinize their words like they should.
Tired, sad to say, but athiest will never accept that what you are saying might even be true. He/she is just a lib parrot and will stick to the talking points.
As for Pelosi, she is one scary woman.
isnt that the bill that opened the coffers on flex fuel? i mean…the blunder that the us government made where you take food and make it into gas…driving the cost of food up to a 40% inflationary rate?
so tell us this…if the pelosi/democrat energy bill you cite was so fabulous…why is it that within 12 months of its passage…the price of oil more than trippled?
as i recall…oil didnt start dropping until…that lame president you all hate soo much..yup…president bush…when he took action to lift executive orders to block oil drilling…oil prices started dropping like a rock…while the democrat party went off on vacation because they were convinced that nothing would stop the price of oil from going ever higher than it already had at 147.00 per barrel…
but then again…advancing frivolous legislation is about all those liberals are good at…otherwise they could never move all those earmarks through the already over-spent US Budget…
and remember…hr6 was rushed through by pelosi and reid…and they didnt provide a list of all the earmarks in hr6 to the floor until after the vote…pretty slippery slope they are on…scheming to defraud our representatives…
“…that lame president you all hate soo much…”
There’s a thing about rhetoric, that if you just keep on saying it, it will become ‘true.’ You criticize Libs like me for it, and then you know what? YOU GO OFF AND DO IT YOURSELVES. It’s fun to say that Libs hate Bush, isn’t it? Well we don’t. I don’t like any of policies, in fact, I may hate his policies, but I do not hate Bush. I saw Gibsons interview with him, and I couldn’t help but think, “I would love to be friends with that guy.” Yes, contrary to what you might believe, it is possible to like someone without liking their politics. I have friends of every political leaning, and yet I can still sit down, have a drink with them, and laugh. I hope my fellow Libs will take this to heart.