Nancy Pelosi’s Gift to the Republicans

Speaker of the House, Nanacy Pelosi, should have taken the opportunity of the vote yesterday to sound grand-eloquent and all embracing.  Instead she ceded both political and strategic ground by taking a side shot at the Administration, the Congressional Republicans and the Republican Party.  This was a mistake.

Patently, the Republicans were to blame for the failure of the vote.  This is both clear from the breakdown of command of their own party that defied their party lines as well as by the ideological reservation of those that did so.  The fact that two thirds of the Democratic Party voted for the bill should have cleared the way for the Democrats to label the Republicans as the ‘wreckers’ of the package. 

Instead of this clear cut clarity (that the voters like) Pelosi’s words were enough to muddy the waters.  Against charges leveled against the Congressional Republicans, the Republican Party through Rudolf Giuliani and others could point to these very public utterances that it was out of synchronization with at least the spirit of the bill.  The worst thing is that her words clearly had no affect i.e. they were not the main driver of the ‘nay’ vote.  But it was a pure gift of political capital to the Republicans who can now claim a) to have supported the survival package b) to have rejected unnecessary expense to the tax payer and c) to have attempted to act in a bipartisan manner.  The Republicans must be grateful to Nancy Pelosi.