Nancy Pelosi is proving herself to be an incredibly myopic and genuinely stupid person — and we mean that with as much respect as we can possibly give a Speaker of the House who is actually letting something like this happen. It’s like she’s living in some alternate reality.
Wow, the Republicans are really getting their act together. What they are doing now, with these gas price protests, is really quite genius.
They’ve forced Pelosi to turn off the electricity and CSPAN cameras, trying to stop Republicans from challenging her unpopular and ridiculous stance on offshore oil drilling. They’ve also forced Obama to make yet another flip-flop, this one on his stance against offshore drilling, that he is now for, since people in Florida want this. Tomorrow, who knows. If people in Virginia don’t want offshore drilling, Obama will be against it again. He’s just that shameless.
And Pelosi? We haven’t had much respect for her in the past year, but this business of shutting off electricity and forbidding CSPAN from filming is just bad, bad, bad for Democrats. Truly one of the dumbest political moves the party’s made in, well, the past week. We were about to say it was one of the dumbest political moves the party’s ever made, but almost everything the Democratic Party leadership has done since January to promote Obama has been some combination of stupid, bad, suicidal, and terrible.
Here’s crackerjack reporter Ben Smith’s take on what’s to come this week:
Continuing with their guerilla tactics from last week, House Republicans will be back on the floor Monday to talk gas prices, even though Congress is in recess, and they may stay there all week.
More than a dozen Republicans have already committed to make appearances, according to House GOP leadership aide, including National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole (Ga.).
Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who lead Friday’s five-hour talkathon after the House shut down for the August recess, are also expected to be there, according to this aide.
“In an urgent memo sent to GOP Members and staff Saturday (“A Call to Action on American Energy”), Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) hailed Friday’s action, which was led by Reps. Mike Pence (R-IN), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), Tom Price (R-GA), and others, and encouraged House Republicans to return to the Capitol beginning Monday morning to help keep the historic effort going,” said a press release just released by Minority Leader Boehner’s office.
“It’s not a request we make lightly. But the American people are suffering,” Boehner and Blunt said in the memo. “The consequences of continued congressional inaction on gas prices are unacceptable. We’ve called on the Speaker to call Congress back into an emergency session this month and schedule a vote on the American Energy Act. We must continue to make a stand until the Speaker complies.”
The session will not be televised, since C-Span does not control the cameras inside the House chamber. Rather, those come under the purview of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats, and they’re unlikely to do anything to help Republicans.
But Republicans felt they got a lot of good press out of Friday’s “revolt,” so they will be back at it again, and younger GOP lawmakers were clearly energized by the tactic, something not evident among Republicans for most of the 110th Congress.
