A Derailment On The Way To The Trainwreck

The Hill is on a roll today. They have another article about the way Nancy Pelosi keeps getting shot in the foot - by members of her own party. Mind you, she takes aim at her own foot often enough as it is, so things like Pete Stark's foolishly incendiary comments during the SCHIP debate really don't help much.

Last week’s vote on overriding President Bush’s children’s health insurance veto should have been a brief respite from a pretty tough week for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

After being forced to back away from votes on Armenian genocide and intelligence surveillance law, she could watch Republicans stick with an unpopular president on an unpopular position.

But when Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) fired off a comment about troops being sent to Iraq “to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement,” Pelosi saw her message machine hop the rails.

It’s a situation that’s played itself out with surprising regularity — usually on YouTube — since Democrats took over earlier this year.
There was House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey’s (D-Wis.) dressing-down of a Marine Corps mom about war funding, shouting in a Rayburn Building hallway about “idiot liberals.” Obey later apologized.

Then Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) threatened the spending earmarks of a member who questioned the millions Murtha was sending to a drug intelligence center in his district. Murtha later apologized.

Then Republicans succeeded in getting floor votes on whether Democratic lawmakers would publicly condemn an ad by the liberal group MoveOn.org calling Gen. David Petraeus “General Betray Us.”

Republicans gleefully posted these moments on YouTube and each was relentlessly flogged by the Republican leadership through websites, e-mails and media appearances.

For example, when Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam (R-Fla.) lined up on CNN with House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on healthcare, Putnam changed the topic to whether Clyburn should apologize for  Stark.

“The Republican leadership has been very clever,” said John Feehery, a regular contributor to The Hill’s Pundits Blog who was a communications aide to Republican leaders while they were in power. “They’ve drawn Nancy Pelosi into these debates by demanding that she apologize.”

In other words, they've been successfully using the exact same tactics the Democrats used against a Republican majority. And they have learned the power of the YouTube moment. Paybacks aren't much fun when you're on the receiving end, are they?

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  By mockinbrd, Tuesday, 23 October , 2007 @ 3:56 pm

  dang

Other Links to this Post

1. The Oxford Medievalist — Tuesday, 23 October , 2007 @ 7:35 pm