Beltway attacks on Nancy Pelosi

Beltway attacks on Nancy Pelosi

The mindless group-think driving the media's caricatures of Nancy Pelosi is truly astounding to behold, even considering the source. She's not even Speaker yet, and they've already pronounced her to be a bitchy, vindictive shrew incapable of leading because she's consumed by petty personal bickering rather than serious and substantive considerations. And all of this is based on nothing.Unsurprisingly, all of this has been concocted by the herd of all-knowing Beltway analysts who fancy themselves to be such high-minded warriors against conventional wisdom even though they are its most obedient vessels.

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The Bush administration has spent six years completely obsessed with personal loyalty to the President and intolerant of the slightest independence. The entire Congress was kept strictly in line for the last five years. Every official who showed the slightest independence was replaced by obedient Bush loyalists. Yet Pelosi does nothing other than support an ally rather than an opponent for the position immediately underneath her, and that makes her some out-of-control egomaniac consumed by personal vanity and emotional impulses.

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Americans just elected new leadership quite deliberately. They are obviously fine with Nancy Pelosi. Republicans tried to make the election be about her -- constantly reminding everyone that a vote for Democrats would mean installing super-liberal Nancy Pelosi and her San Francisco values in power -- and the Democrats won. So voters have no problem with Pelosi. They want Congressional Democrats to take the lead in policy and governance because the Republicans have failed so miserably. I have no idea whether Pelosi will be a good Speaker, but I'm going to withhold judgment until she actually at least starts, and Americans are obviously doing that as well. More