Tag: Nancy Pelosi

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national politics & policies political challengers

The Devil Is in the Seat Cushion

Nancy Pelosi, debates, Trump

A few weeks ago, I suggested setting up a betting pool for the upcoming presidential debates. How many would there be?

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe predicted that there would be three — “no more, no less” — but prescribed zero: “America’s quadrennial presidential debates have become an absurdity,” he wrote. 

“They long ago devolved into shallow ‘gotcha’ contests, prime-time entertainments designed to elicit memorable soundbites — tart put-downs rehearsed in advance or the unforced error of an unexpected gaffe,” which is about right, though President Donald J. Trump excels at the spontaneous put-down. 

Advisability to the side, Jacoby surmised what we all have surmised: that Democrats shouldn’t be pushing debates. That is, if they want their candidate, Joe Biden, to win the election. He is too off his game. Biden should take a hint from the name given to his generation: Silent.

Enter Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and very rarely silent herself — and indeed older than Biden but as sharp as the proverbial tack the Devil is said to need to sit upon. She says that Biden should not debate President Trump. 

“Don’t tell anybody I told you this,” she jests. “Especially don’t tell Joe Biden. But I don’t think there should be any debates.”

The president, she argues, has not “comported himself in a way . . . with truth, evidence, data, and facts. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t legitimize a conversation with him, nor a debate in terms of the presidency of the United States.” 

She dubs a debate with Trump “an exercise in skullduggery.” 

Good politics — realpolitik — but also horrific politics — setting up a transparent-but-serviceable CYA excuse. 

But it is definitely 2020 politics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability meme national politics & policies Popular

Awful Aspirations

Nancy Pelosi, New Green Deal, aspirations,

A funny thing happened on the way to voting on the Democrats’ Green New Deal (GND). With ‘earth in the balance,’ the proposal for fixing climate change — and so much more! — was granted its first procedural vote in the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate.

It failed, 0-57.

Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), the Senate sponsor, along with 41 other Democrats* and independent Bernie Sanders, voted “present” to protest what he called “sabotage,” claiming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) “wants to silence your voice.” 

Au contraire! McConnell longed to hear Democrats sing the bill’s praises — loud, proud, and on the record.

After the vote, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) absurdly made the opposite accusation: Republicans were “climate delaying . . . costing us lives + destroying communities.”  

Meanwhile, “If the Green New Deal came up for a vote in the Democrat-controlled House,” USA Today reports, “it would have trouble passing.”

“It’s a list of aspirations,” says Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who does not plan to bring it to a vote. Though Democrats want to address climate change, the speaker points out that the “bill has many things that have nothing to do with climate.”

Rep. Elaine Luria, (D-Va.) echoes Pelosi: “[T]he Green New Deal is aspirational.” Rep. Sean Casten, (D-Ill.) adds, “The aspirations of the Green New Deal are great.”**

But is the GND something “great” to which Americans should aspire? 

Only if they yearn for government-monopolized healthcare, free college tuition, micro-management of the economy, and government providing everyone a job, except those who don’t want one . . . who would get a guaranteed income, regardless. 

I aspire to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * In the Senate, three Democrats — Sens. Doug Jones (Ala.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) — and independent Sen. Angus King (Maine) joined all 53 Republicans in voting No.

** All four House co-chairs of the New Democrat Coalition’s Climate Change Task Force — Casten and Luria as well as Don Beyer, (D-Va.) and Susan Wild, (D-Pa.) — have come out in opposition to the GND. 

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Nancy Pelosi, New Green Deal, aspirations,

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Accountability government transparency

Put the Public in Public Policy

Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, secrecy, transparency, negotiations

“Negotiations are impossible without trust,” wrote Leon Panetta in a Washington Post op-ed.

What with all his experience, Mr. Panetta has some reason to be trusted on his chosen subject, government shutdowns. The California Democrat spent 16 years in the Congress before joining the Clinton Administration as Director of the Office of Management and Budget and later serving as White House Chief of Staff. He was Obama’s first CIA Director and then Secretary of Defense.

But not every one of the sage’s pronouncements passes muster. 

“Never,” he advised, “negotiate in public.” 

He is of course referring to the hilarious chat President Trump had with two Democratic leaders . .  . and a bland, bored, and blank Vice President Pence.

“The talks to avert a shutdown got off to a terrible start,” Panetta argues, “when the president, during an Oval Office meeting with likely incoming speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), began arguing his position in front of White House reporters. . . . In all the negotiations on the budget that I took part in as both House Budget Committee chairman and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, not one took place in front of the media. Public shouting matches usually guarantee failure.”

The implication? That these previous negotiations were “successful.”

To those with careers ensconced in Washington power, they worked out just splendidly, I’m sure. But the aftermath of these private, secretive agreements on the rest of us? It can be quantified: $21 trillion.

In federal debt. 

We do not need more of that “success.”

Let’s put the public back in public policy decisions.  “It’s called transparency,” President Trump said. 

Yes. 

More of that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, secrecy, transparency, negotiations

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Accountability national politics & policies term limits

Mrs. Term Limits?

Nancy Pelosi, term limits

Do politicians oppose term limits on principle?

For the answer to be yes, we would first have to explain to them what principles are.

Sure, politicians adamantly oppose term limits that cut against their self-interest, i.e. apply to them. But they are often for term limits . . . when the limitation applies to others.

The exception to this rule? When limiting one’s own terms — or pledging to do so in the future — is absolutely essential in order to win an election.

Take the case of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who wishes to be elected Speaker in January by the new Democratic House majority.

Mrs. Pelosi is an unlikely candidate . . . for Mrs. Term Limits. And yet, she has agreed to support a new rule imposing term limits on leadership positions — even her own speakership.

What gives?

A number of newly elected congresspeople won their seats on a promise to change Washington. And to gain votes, they had pledged not to support the exceedingly unpopular, long-serving Swamp Creature for speaker.

Or should that be Mrs. Swamp Creature?

Now with Democrats comprising a narrow 17-seat majority in the new Congress, these young upstarts wield enough votes to deny Pelosi the position she covets.

So, against the objections of her longtime lieutenants, Pelosi has promised these “rebels” that she will not merely bring before her caucus a new rule imposing limits of three terms for leadership positions, including her own, but she also insists that even if that rule fails to win the support of the Democratic caucus, she will personally, voluntarily, abide by those limits.

Meet the Missus. Don’t ask about her previous status.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Nancy Pelosi, term limits

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

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ideological culture national politics & policies Popular

No-Study Politics

The 200-plus “youth activists” who stormed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s offices (see yesterday’s Common Sense) were protesting Pelosi’s leadership on climate issues. Soon-to-be Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was there to encourage Pelosi to listen to them.

“We need a Green New Deal,” Ocasio-Cortez informed her natural constituency, journalists, “and we need to get to 100 percent renewables because our lives depend on it.”

An impossible task, of course. Which means activists would always possess a reason to protest — forever and ever without end.

Still, Ocasio-Cortez and her friends seem earnest. The Representative-Elect insists “we have 10 years left and I — not just as an elected member, but as a 29-year-old woman — am thinking not just about what we are going to accomplish in the next two years but the America that we’re going to live in in the next 30 years.”

A little skepticism is in order. Prophecies to the effect that we have only “ten or 12 years left” after which “global warming will be irreversible” are made repeatedly . . . every ten years or so. Rinse. 

“I think in 2018, when fires, floods, storms are getting worse,” another Pelosi protester reiterated, “and when the U.N. climate report says we have 12 years to radically transform our entire economy at a scale that’s unprecedented in human history, I think studying climate change is absolutely the wrong thing to do.”

What pearls of wisdom to conclude the coverage. Of course “studying climate change is absolutely the wrong thing to do” to “fix” climate change! Who needs information?

To fight climate change . . . or  “radically transform our entire economy.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture meme national politics & policies Popular too much government

More of the More

trap, socialism, democratic socialism

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s triumphant entry into Washington, DC, as a United States Representative-Elect, is quickly proving a cautionary tale for Democrats. She’s an enthusiastic socialist. Or “progressive,” to use the preferred euphemism. And thus Democrats see her as a fresh breeze to air out the stodgy, musty chambers of . . .

Nancy Pelosi’s office. 

Ocasio-Cortez showed up in the House office building last week, along with other protestors “flooding,” as Politico put it, the Minority Leader’s work area. 

But what she is proving to be is not a breath of fresh air. And she is not merely “more of the same” in leftist agitation. 

She may be “more of the more.”

Progressives cannot seem to formulate an upper limit to their ideology. Dr. Jordan Peterson, trying to be “precise,” warns that this is the main problem of the left today: a lack of any sense of “going too far.” 

If government growth is always good, then . . . all the way to the socialism of Stalin, Mao and the Castros? The result of “always more” is “most.”

Real socialism is the  trap. “Democratic socialism” is the bait.

Their usual rebuttal? “We just want to be more like Scandinavian countries.” But these countries have less regulation on markets than America does currently. We should believe the “Scandinavian Limit” precisely when progressives earnestly push to repeal some regulations. 

Ideology aside, this may be mainly . . . politics. Ocasio-Cortez proclaimed herself “looking forward” to “working together” with former and likely new Speaker Pelosi, and left the protest before the police began making arrests.

A statesperson in the making.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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