Is Pelosi in danger?

On Thursday Timothy Noah at Slate wrote the following:

I’ll admit my timing could be better, since the incoming House Democrats, on a unanimous voice vote, just made Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaker of the House. But I think her party should give serious thought to dumping her.

The proximate reason, of course, is that she tried (and, thankfully, failed) to install as House majority leader Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa. It’s bad enough that Pelosi promoted Murtha (over the perfectly acceptable Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who won the caucus vote) in spite of Murtha’s having once been named an unindicted co-conspirator in Abscam, a 1980 FBI sting operation in which G-men posing as representatives of an Arab sheikh offered $50,000 bribes to members of Congress. Even worse is that Pelosi persisted even after a videotape of Murtha’s Abscam performance (“I’m not interested … at this point“) turned up on the Web, and Democrats began fretting that they were about to erase all distinctions between themselves and the Abramoff-tainted Republicans from whom they’d only just wrenched a House majority. Almost before it began, Pelosi’s honeymoon is over.

Today even more trouble is seen on the horizon as both the LA Times and the New York Times fire warning shots across Pelosi’s bow.  The LA Times comments, indirectly, on Pelosi’s political bent.

The most substantial — and alarming — speculation regarding the Harman-Pelosi rift is that the speaker may consider Harman too moderate. If one of the reasons Pelosi backed Murtha was because he took it to Republicans on the war in Iraq, Harman — who initially supported the war — may be insufficiently partisan in Pelosi’s eyes.

Pelosi, who has vowed to lead the House from the center, should think twice before indulging in a witch hunt of colleagues who can work well with Republicans.

Then the New York Times comments on her acumen as a leader:

Nancy Pelosi has managed to severely scar her leadership even before taking up the gavel as the new speaker of the House. First, she played politics with the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee to settle an old score and a new debt. And then she put herself in a lose-lose position by trying to force a badly tarnished ally, Representative John Murtha, on the incoming Democratic Congress as majority leader. The party caucus put a decisive end to that gambit yesterday, giving the No. 2 job to Steny Hoyer, a longtime Pelosi rival.

Now the Blue Dog Democrats are speaking out. Over at the Crabitat, Gaius sees a coming train wreck

 

Nancy Pelosi has more trouble than I realized earlier today. Not only is the media firing warning shots, but she has an incipient rebellion on her hands that could fracture her ability to lead. This one could be a train wreck.

Eighteen members of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of conservative House Democrats, wrote Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Thursday imploring her to choose Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) to chair the House Intelligence Committee next year.

 

 

Why is Pelosi doing so poorly?  It’s because she believes the hype.

That hype is that the nutroots, MoveOn.org and other far left groups won the election.

The problem is, as has been discussed on this blog and elsewhere, that the nutsroots didn’t win the election and they don’t know it. Pelosi, Murtha and their ilk still think that they, and not the centrist candidates of Rahm Emanuel, won. The fact is that the change this election wanted was not one of politcal spectrum, but of whom will run the government.

Republicans were seen as wasteful, corrupt and inefficient. So the change was not so much as going down a new fork in the river of the politics…we didn’t take the left fork… but rather who would steer America down the middle of the river.

And savvy political operatives like rat face James Carville know that the middle course…”common sense”…is what is wanted. Even Schmucky Charles Schumer has spoken of it. And smart politicians know that this was not the mandate the nutsroots claim, as does their propaganda organs such as the LA and New York Slimes, and that this is just a trial marriage. They will not let the Party set itself up to be blasted the way Hillary did in ‘94. Mrs. Clinton’s push for Socialized Medicine scared the bejeezus out of moderates and independents who helped push the Republicans to power…exactly as they did this past election for the Democrats.

Meanwhile the leadership of Pelosi is already playing like a 2008 Republican ad campaign: Cut & Run, hypocrisy on defense, insider politics and corruption…everything the Democrats ran on changing in 2006.