Keep this between us, but if you watch Nancy Pelosi closely, the knowledgeable observer can ascertain what she is really thinking. So why does Pelosi have a dance in her step, a sparkle in her eye and a glow in her smile these days?
When Nancy Pelosi is on a roll she plays politics the way Fred Astaire danced to Cole Porter, the way John F. Kennedy defeated Richard M. Nixon, the way Bill and Hillary Clinton obliterated Newt Gingrich and the House GOP bully boys who tried to impeach Clinton but actually helped reelect him. In the deep recesses of his Machiavellian mind Karl Rove agrees with me.
Rove's juvenile and misogynist insults of Pelosi are offensive to all women, and many of us men, but are revealing. The Sphinx-like Rove is brilliant at visually masking his true opinions, but childish at giving them away by the declining quality of his insults. The lower Rove sinks in public, the more worried he is in private. This is why Pelosi is smiling.
From Mitt Romney to Darrell Issa, while the American people hunger for more jobs and better healthcare, the upper strata of the Republican Party seem ready to change their collective middle names to Milhous."
Democrats considering making small or large donations to the causes of Pelosi or Obama or Harry Reid might contemplate what America would be like if the short-pants McCarthyites, retread Nixons and rightist extremists are not put down as President Nixon, Speaker Gingrich and Joe McCarthy were in their prime. Think about it, and as Spike said, do the right thing."
I predict: Nancy Pelosi will enter 2013 within five votes of being Speaker. She will have a majority of five members, or fall five votes short. Rove's attacks on Pelosi are part of the same mentality that declares war against pay equity for women, tells moms and dads that their young daughters and sons who are ill should lose their insurance coverage and launches Nixonian abuse-of-power attacks against Attorney General Holder to further their attempts to bully Hispanics and blacks into not voting, which would make Hispanics the only Americans forced to show me your papers," which is a notion made famous in another country, in another century, which insults the American idea.
Let's give Nancy Pelosi the great credit she deserves. I worked for House leaders under three Speakers, including the indescribably great Tip O'Neill, and Nancy Pelosi as Speaker was up there with the greats. If the bills passed by the House during her Speakership were enacted into law, the number of jobs would be much greater, foreclosures would be much fewer, the lives of our children would be much better and the lot of all women would be much improved. Nancy Pelosi is within reach of a great victory, which is why she is smiling and why I am, too.
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