There are many cults in Washington, D.C. The Founding Church of Scientology sits between Dupont and Logan Circles. The earth-worshiping Defenders of Wildlife are just a few blocks south, their entrance guarded by imposing bronze grey wolves. One block north, the Human Rights Campaign dispatches starry-eyed adherents with clipboards to recruit followers, and to the east lie the child-harvesters. Two blocks away, the remnants of the Church of Her keep Hillary’s flame burning; and crowning them all: the mighty cult of SoulCycle.
But today, the city has another faith working reporters into a fervor, and her name is Nancy Pelosi.
Reporters have called her “basically invincible,” a “political grandmaster,” an “icon of female power,” a “rockstar” and, time and time again, “a fashion icon.” Reporters have venerated “her clothes, her hand gestures, her facial expression” and placed a halo ’round her head. Activists projected her image on San Francisco’s city hall and a D.C. restaurant dedicated a Christmas tree in her honor.
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is doing to President Donald Trump what no one else has in the nearly three years since he took office: She’s making him squirm.” Business Insider pronounced two days after Christmas. “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has managed to accomplish what no one else has even tried in the past three years: sticking it right back to Trump,” RawStory echoed the same day in an article that includes “squirm” in its headline.
Time magazine featured her portrait on its cover this month for the third time, with a dramatic, black and white photograph: “Why Nancy Pelosi Went All In Against Trump.” It’s just the latest in a months-long chorus of praise rising for her apparent victory against President Donald Trump. It’s a chorus gulped down by reporters, talking heads, staffers, and activists across the city.
The vote to impeach the president — which won’t result in his removal from office and was achieved on a strictly partisan line plus two no’s, a “present” and an actual defection from her party — was sandwiched between the the speaker’s House passing funding for the president’s wall then his long-touted trade deal. Then Pelosi held the articles for weeks, demanding Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell bend to her will. The press lauded her strategy and waited dutifully for the senator to crack, but of course he did not, as was easily predictable to anyone with even a limited understanding of who actually had the leverage and how McConnell has ruled his chamber.
The weeks over which the speaker fought her losing battle weren’t dominated by coverage of McConnell’s terrible meanness, as she might have hoped, but instead lost to Christmas, the New Year, and then the president’s wins against Iran. And what now?
As the impeachment trial arrives in the Senate in time for the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, it isn’t looking like a win for Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who will lose invaluable campaign time on a trial for which everyone already knows the end. One Washington Post columnist thinks this a master stroke by Pelosi, although his contention is based entirely on a questionable belief that Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vice President Joe Biden are the men most fit to defeat the president in a general election.
But Washington’s minority power isn’t simply about the public opinion battles and the next election — a minority can actually win decisive victories. When President Barack Obama handily won his 2012 re-election and gained two seats in the Senate, giving his majority more room to maneuver, Washington held its breath for the swathe of progressive victories sure to follow.
Sequester was doomed and amnesty for illegal immigrants was the talk of both parties; bipartisan hawks were prepared to give their blessing to American intervention in Syria and the terrible murder of children at Sandy Hook had guaranteed the passage of bipartisan gun-control. None of those happened, though, because three conservatives, Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul, won victory after victory “by shifting public opinion and navigating parliamentary procedure.”
Reid, then routinely lauded as a master of the Senate by political reporters trading propaganda for access to power, was powerless to stop these three Republicans despite his electoral gains and the popularity of his president. Student loan bailouts, climate legislation, and any other host of leftist dreams would see no sunshine that decade.
If liberals continue to succeed in morphing math, the English language, proper spelling and even grammar as “racist,” who’s to say where it ends?
On the one hand Pelosi touts the Constitution because “impeachment” but on the other hand it is the dead old slavers’ white men’s writing and worthy of tossing in the dustbin of history.
I recall when the last really great Parliamentarian expert left office in the House then in the Senate.
Soon, no one will be left in office who really understands how and why things are supposed to work the way they do in Congress.
Pretenders will try to pull the wool over the eyes of those too ignorant of Parliamentary procedure.
And, at the same time, those totally ignorant will try to say it is old, white and worthy of being tossed aside.
It’s all part of a plan to destroy the American gov’t without a shot being fired.
And Pelosi is playing her little part in moving the goalposts excellently.
Somewhere lost in their fantasy of removing Trump, and then Pence as an accomplice…..
Oooo. Big deal. Not that Trump has “squirmed”, but this is sure a big deal for the whiny crybabies that can’t accept losing an election. Trump has committed no crimes, has fulfilled promise after promise and has invigorated the economy but all Democrats can think about is “making him squirm” and “impeaching him for life”. Damn, the adolescence of this spoiled brats is palpable.
You can just about gauge how badly the Democrats realize they’ve screwed up by how hyperbolic their redefining of their failure is. Because Democrats are so desperate they allowed their desire to impeach overtake their realization that doing it without cause would be disastrous. The wisdom of the old adage of just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you SHOULD evaded them. Not only have they crippled themselves, but they have now set a dangerous precedent.
Pelosi was so rattled by watching impeachment spin out of her control that she called Putin “Valamir Plootin” in her announcement. Of course, she could just be drunk, but no doubt she’s aware of what she’s done to the Democrats… or allowed them to do to themselves.