It sounds like the incoming Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, will be running the House like a school-girl clique -- maybe it's not surprising, but she could have tried a little harder to escape the stereotypes that will inevitably plague her as the first woman to hold the office.
House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) endorsed Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) yesterday as the next House majority leader, thereby stepping into a contentious intraparty fight between Murtha and her current deputy, Maryland's Steny H. Hoyer.The unexpected move signaled the sizable value Pelosi gives to personal loyalty and personality preferences. Hoyer competed with her in 2001 for the post of House minority whip, while Murtha managed her winning campaign. Pelosi has also all but decided she will not name the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) to chair that panel next year, a decision pregnant with personal animus.
Pelosi had been outspoken about her frustration with Murtha's declaration that he would challenge Hoyer, currently the House minority whip, for the majority leader post long before Democrats had secured the majority. Many believed she would remain on the sidelines, just as Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) did earlier this year when three Republicans vied for the post of House majority leader.
Maybe Nancy Pelosy should abort her personal animus (kudos to Jonathan Weisman for the gender-based pun) and instead base her decisions on what's best for the county.
Update:
Apparently even Congressional Democrats say Nancy Pelosi is running the House like a high school.
As she awaited her new grandchild after her election-night triumph, Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi was lauded as one of the most consequential Democrats in history and treated as a foreign head of state at the White House, where she got the big chair in front of the Oval Office fireplace. But the dour Republicans and worried Democrats have switched places, however momentarily, now that she has unexpectedly injected herself into the bitter race to be her underling, the House Majority Leader. "This is the first time I've ever seen a leader insert themselves like this," said a veteran of many Democratic leadership races. Pelosi's camp says it's like a high-school election and won't be a defining moment for her leadership. ...Hoyer poses a competing power base to Pelosi, and they have not had warm relations. "She wants to purge the leadership of people who disagree with her," said a Democratic official with a front-row seat. "It's about people she can personally control. Hoyer is an excellent public face for the party. She's more a behind-the-scenes player."
Behind-the-scenes power plays go on in both sides of the aisle. Why don't you just write about your policy differences with her? Surely that can be easily stretched to 52 blogs a year or more.
Also, lay off on the misogynistic "meow" / "school girl clique" stuff. You don't look smart when you talk like that.
BTW, WWJD? Jesus never said a misogynistic word. Paul probably did a couple of times but in context his comments are not woman hating at all.
Pelosi's just a hag. That's about the end of it.
Y'know, the whole PC, thought-control-through-language thing doesn't work any more, at least not on those of us who are out of college. I don't really believe that you're offended, and you don't really believe that his words were misogynistic. So spare us the lemon-sucking PC schoolmarm act.
Having said that, I think there's more here than personal pettiness. There's an enormous rift in the Democratic Party right now, and they can't keep it papered over forever. Now that the Dems control both houses, their voters want some performance. But the voters' demands contradict each other.
The loony left wants Bush, Cheney, adn Rumsfeld pilloried for a week before being hung. But the more conservative Dems want to hold onto power so that they can grow government, and they can't do that if their party acts on its more lunatic urges.
The Dem leadership understands that its future depends on being perceived as a party run by adults. But it isn't clear that the adults can stay in charge.
DL: Me smart!
BB: Which adults are those? Murtha might have counted as such, until he discovered that going nutzo would make him so popular. It's not clear to me that the adults in the party hold any power anymore.
If Nancy Pelosi is not yummy, yummy eye candy I don't know what is. She is not only a true, beautiful woman and a mother as well; she is sharp as a tack. A lot of these "old boys" are getting the word beginning with Steny Hoyer. Jane Harman is so far to the left and anti-military it is good to see her get the boot.
Nancy is changing the landscape with new ideas. I look for life in America to be even more interesting than it is now with Darling Nancy as Speaker of The House. Don't you? :)
Ewww that Nancy makes me tingle!