Centrists express satisfaction with Pelosi — Republican centrists! Under the GOP majority, moderately labor-friendly bills "would have never gotten to the floor," centrist Republican Rep. Mike Ferguson of New Jersey recently told the New York Times. "Now they have been brought to the floor, and I've voted for them."
The House speaker has even quietly deferred dreams that her longtime liberal allies wanted to make reality once the Democrats regained power. She squelched Rep. Charles B. Rangel's (D-N.Y.) bid to reinstate the draft and Rep. John Conyers Jr.'s (D-Mich.) plan to impeach Bush. She asked Reps. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to hold off on pushing for an end to the military policy of "don't ask, don't tell" toward gays and lesbians — an issue she holds dear.
Pelosi is a pragmatist, and there are two severe constraints that will keep her in the center at least through 2008. The first is her need to keep the tent big. Many of the freshman Democrats were elected from conservative districts, and their defeat in the next congressional elections could take the majority back out of the Democrats' hands. One of Pelosi's influential deputies, Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel, has been advising vulnerable freshmen to vote more for their districts and less for their party.
All this doesn't mean she's hopelessly hemmed in. By many measures, she has accomplished as much in her first months as Newt Gingrich did in early 1995, when the GOP took control of the House. She's got through a responsible budget, a war supplemental funding bill and a new panel on global warming. Now the Senate has to duplicate her level of discipline.
Indeed, Pelosi has been so careful in achieving her legislative aims that her critics on the right are often forced to stake out the odd position that she shouldn't be making any changes at all to Bush's program, the Republican tax cuts or the way the GOP did things when they were in power.
Nancy Pelosi: the extreme moderate - Los Angeles Times
It's funny that on the night of the Election, the one thing Fox News was saying that "Well the Democrats are going to go so far left, its going to give tons of ammo to the GOP in 2008, just think "speaker pelosi" and americans will turn"
How utterly wrong they were, and since Bush has promised to veto practically anything even partially liberal, the GOP tries to smear them for not passing enough legislation, even though the House has done an amazing job, thanks to Nancy
Far more popular than Newt, and obviously very very skilled at her job that deserves praise from both sides as a matter of respect
05-13-2007, 02:01 PM
