Posted on 12/03/2008 5:55:44 PM PST by ventana
Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) moves since the November elections have shaken up some of her colleagues, with some looking over their shoulders and others worried about how the Speaker will lead her expanded majority in 2009.
Next year is regarded as the biggest legislative opportunity for Democrats since 1993, the last time they controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress.
But not all Democrats are celebrating. Liberals are worried about Pelosi’s vow to govern “from the middle” and centrists are concerned that the make-up of the House leadership team has shifted noticeably to the left.
Contrary to the jubilation of House Democrats after they regained control of the lower chamber after the 2006 elections, there is some unease among members heading into the 111th Congress.
“Everybody I talk to, everybody’s worried about something,” said a Democratic staffer.
Pelosi’s effort to make some Democrats anxious could be a calculated maneuver as she seeks to maximize the effectiveness of her caucus heading into 2009. Pelosi’s hard-charging tone and decisions over the past month have sent a message to her colleagues: Don’t get too comfortable.
The seniority system that tempers the power of the Speaker is teetering, having received a body blow from Rep. Henry Waxman’s (D-Calif.) coup at the Energy and Commerce Committee.
When chairmen aren’t flinching at the possibility of a challenge from a junior member, they can look forward to being bounced by term limits in four years. That’s a change that Pelosi quietly endorsed in the 2007 House rules package.
Throughout the past four years, there has been a palpable strain in the Democratic Caucus between the older members who extol the seniority system and younger legislators who believe they deserve a more significant role in decisionmaking.
Pelosi, the unquestioned leader in the House whose enormous power seems to grow by the day, has sought to placate both factions. And to this point, she has succeeded.
Few members clash publicly with Pelosi. Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who were at odds with Pelosi over the last few years, were stripped of their top committee posts.
Centrists are grumbling that their growing ranks aren’t represented in the leadership team that Pelosi shaped through back-room arm-twisting. The so-called Blue Dogs, while publicly celebrating President-elect Obama’s commitment to “pay-go,” are wondering when the stimulus balloon stops expanding.
There is also growing speculation that pay-go will be waived for healthcare legislation, which is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
Meanwhile, Congress has swept in and out of town since the election with little to show except for a deposed chairman and a tongue-lashing for auto executives. And to the extent that any decisions are being announced, they’re coming from Obama’s headquarters in Chicago.
Most leadership aides, for their part, say any talk of tension is exaggerated. The word out of Pelosi’s office is not to worry.
“Everyone had and will continue to have a seat at the table,” said Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami. “Her record has been that she’s a pragmatist who gets things done.”
On the day after the election, Pelosi assured that “the country must be governed from the middle.”
But as she spoke, Waxman was seeking to move things to the left. He spent the day making calls to fellow members asking them for the gavel of Energy and Commerce, where the heart of the Obama agenda will be hammered out. About two weeks later, the environmental left prevailed over the business-minded centrists when Dingell, the champion of the auto industry, was ousted.
“We’ll work with the new leadership,” Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.), incoming leader of the conservative Blue Dogs, said after the Dingell vote. “But to deny a man who defines the modern Congress ... is a mistake.”
Pelosi insists she had nothing to do with it. Her aides claim that she stayed strictly neutral even though Waxman hails from her state and Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.), a Pelosi confidant, lobbied heavily for Waxman.
Pelosi did intervene when Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.) indicated he would run against Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) for caucus chairman. Van Hollen reconsidered, announcing he would stay on at the DCCC, and a Larson-Van Hollen showdown was averted.
In the Dingell-Waxman race, Pelosi’s silence was viewed as an endorsement of Waxman.
“I assume that not playing a role is playing a role,” said House Ways and Means panel Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) last month.
Rangel, in particular, has reason to pay attention to Pelosi’s attention to the seniority system. He is perceived as one of Pelosi’s most loyal lieutenants, but is under increasing pressure to give up his gavel because of mounting ethics charges against him.
Last week, Pelosi took the unusual step of issuing a statement about the ethics committee investigation of Rangel, indicating it had been accelerated.
Yet Pelosi this week reiterated her support for Rangel. Asked at a New York event whether Rangel might lose his chairmanship, she said, “I don’t foresee that.”
Still, there are signs that Republicans might challenge Rangel’s chairmanship by way of a floor vote that will further test Rangel’s standing and popularity.
The ripples of the Dingell vote are still being felt, as the discussion turns to whether Waxman loyalists will try to unseat Dingell allies who chair the panel’s subcommittees, and who will assume Waxman’s Oversight role.
But there’s more uncertainty than that. Some say it was the seniority system, not just Dingell, under attack.
And the old rules, like Dingell, will play more of a ceremonial rule in the future.
“It’s a reed in the wind that there are other forces working the system,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who lost her leadership race last month against Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) for vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus. “The seniority system is a neutral method of promotion, as opposed to [raising] money, which is becoming increasingly important.”
Democrats are embracing at least some aspects of how House Republicans promoted from within when they controlled the chamber from 1995 to 2006. Fundraising, loyalty to leadership and voting records were major factors in the selection of committee chairmen and deciding who would fill coveted seats on “A” committees.
Seniority was a major factor for the GOP, but not the dominant determinant.
Moreover, the six-year limit for committee chairmen that Pelosi has embraced was implemented by Republicans when they were in the majority.
For worried Democratic centrists, the unlikely source of salvation is Obama, derided in the campaign as the most liberal member of the Senate, who sounds more conservative with each new Cabinet appointment.
“While people are disappointed, what’s coming out of the top office in the land is good news,” said an aide to a top centrist lawmaker. Obama has also embraced pay-go principles, delighting Blue Dogs.
Some aides say what tension there is stems from the Democrats’ figuring out how to act as a majority party that controls all levers of lawmaking and policy in the federal government. It was one thing to defy a Speaker. It will be another to defy a president. And Pelosi and Obama were generally on the same page throughout the 2008 campaign season.
“It’s adjusting to a Democrat, and a Democrat with a mandate, in the White House,” said a Democratic leadership aide. “When Obama walks in to the Blue Dogs and says, ‘I need your support for getting out of Iraq in 16 months,’ it gets tough to say no.”
Let Free Republic be the leadership. V's wife.
Rangel, Jefferson, Reid...............
I predict Nancy Pelosi will lose her job along with Obama, Reid and a bunch of other Democrats by 2012 because they will be unable to micromanage our economy so that it becomes a profitable market economy again let alone preventing another terrorist attack by gutting our intelligence agencies and our military.
That is, providing our Republicans begin acting like Republicans again.
“That is, providing our Republicans begin acting like Republicans again.”
_______________________________________
You mean, “When REAL MEN grow a pair in Washington?” I’m waiting. Meanwhile, I will watch paint dry.
Pelosi Leadership
In the same title or sentence is a true oxymoron.
“Pelosi Leadership Rising”
So is my gorge.
Saw a clip of Reagan on Cavuto today - if only someone of his stature would rise again.
Amen.
It is certainly titillating to speculate exactly what 9% Nancy Pelousy will do with the next Congress. The reality is that a lot of Loony Dem leftists are panicking over the fact that whatever happens in the next two years will be on THEIR watch and on THEIR heads!!!
They can’t blame Bush anymore, he won’t be in the WH. They can’t blame Republicans anymore, although they WILL continue to play that record until EVERYONE (but them) realizes that it’s stuck in a groove!!
They know, when they look in the mirror, that they are looking at the face the American voters/taxpayers are going to be looking at when Congress screws up to please Pelousy!!
As much as 9% Nancy wants to ride roughshod over the House, she will get a relatively small window (IMO) of time in which to do her damage before the revolt from both Democrats AND Republicans occurs!!
And, none of them wants to help her lower Congress’ approval record any more than it’s current record low that she achieved!! However, there’s still room for it to plunge lower, and they aren’t off to a good start based on statements she and other Congresscritters are making.
Ya might want to pull that seatbelt a little bit tighter. It could get VERY bumpy over the next two years.
“a Democrat with a mandate, in the White House”
Could someone please tell me what that mandate is? I guess I missed it some how.
Agree. Let’s make that happen by demanding our leadership go in there and divide those SOBs. Pardon my french.
We need as many Freepers as can be summoned to motivate and rally the base to let the pubbies we do have know: do this or die a not so slow political life as we are eyeballing 2012. V’s wife.
Amazingly enough, the talk on TV is that Republicans must abandon conservative principles and become “more moderate.” That in the face of the Reps running the moderate McCain and losing.
Like a bad loaf
Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the constitutionally clueless Congress are wrongly exercising powers that they do not have. More specifically, they are exercising powers that their predecessors have been wrongly usurping from the states since the time of constitutional flunky FDR. This is evidenced by the following statutes which DC politicians hypocritically swear to defend.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution (emphasis added) in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.For example, given that the Constitution is silent about public health care, the 10th A. automatically reserves government power to the states, not the federal government, to regulate and lay taxes for health care.10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution (emphasis added), nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
In fact, Thomas Jefferson, while commenting about the Founder's division of federal and state government powers, noted that the Founders had trusted the states, not the federal government, with the care of the people.
"Our citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation as to others and several States as among themselves. To the united nation belong our external and mutual relations; to each State, severally, the care of our persons (emphasis added), our property, our reputation and religious freedom." --Thomas Jefferson: To Rhode Island Assembly, 1801. ME 10:262 http://tinyurl.com/onx4jIndeed, in my opinion Gov. Palin has "presidential veto power" to stop Obama's health care plan in its tracks on the basis that she's got the power to regulate health care for Alaskans, likewise for the other governors and their states, whereas Obama and Congress do not.
So given that the states actually have the lion's share difference of total government powers minus the limited constitutional powers that the Founders actually delegated to the feds, it's no wonder that God kept Sarah in Alaska. Given Sarah's proven track record when it comes to fighting the big boys, Gov. Palin is in a better position to demand that misguided "leaders" like Pelosi surrender state powers to the states than if Sarah was VP, or even president, in my opinion.
That would be an interesting veto for Governor Palin to exercise. I also like the fact that you call her Governor Palin; I have been calling her Sarah, but in order to restore her stature (not that she has done anything, mind you I am not saying that, just that the culture has) I am going to start calling her Governor Palin. V’s wife.
Looks to be a very bleak year with the left coast in charge of the peoples house.
It wouldn't be a presidential veto, of course. I'm not expert, but such a "veto" would probably be in the form of a lawsuit against the feds. And such a lawsuit could help to reconnect the people to the Constitution and its history.
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