Re: Pelosi's Legacy Of Failure And Political Malfeasance

On 15 Mar 2022, Rudy Canoza <[email protected]> posted some
news:[email protected]: 

> She is a hateful old crow and everything she ever did had roots in
> fear and hatred of anything good. 

AMAC Exclusive – By Andrew Abbott

Late last week, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi formally announced that she
would officially step down from leadership, marking an end to a
two-decade reign as the top House Democrat. While elected Democrats and
the mainstream media have unsurprisingly heaped praise on the
82-year-old Californian, gushing about the “historic” nature of her
speakership, the harsh reality is that Pelosi’s tenure was marked by
some of the most disastrous decisions in U.S. history, the
radicalization of the Democratic Party, and the degradation of American
political culture more broadly. 

Pelosi has often said that her entire approach to governance can be
summarized by a vital lesson her father taught her in her formative
years: “No one is going to give you power. You have to seize it.” From
the time she first rose to prominence as the House Minority Leader in
2003, Pelosi has taken that refrain to heart, constantly clawing for as
much power as possible. While in the minority, Pelosi had a limited
ability to stop Republican legislation. But where she could cause the
GOP headaches, she did, including on popular border security and Social
Security reform measures. 

Democrats finally won back the House majority in 2006, handing Pelosi
the Speaker’s gavel for the first time, and she was reelected in 2008.
The defining moment of her first tenure as Speaker would come in 2010
with the passage of Obamacare. With large Democratic majorities in both
chambers of Congress, a Democrat in the White House, and a liberal
Supreme Court, Pelosi mortgaged the political future of dozens of House
Democrats to ram through a gargantuan and deeply unpopular bill that
upended the American healthcare system. 

In defending the legislation, Pelosi inadvertently let slip one of her
most infamous quotes: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out
what is in it.” When Americans did find out, they were none too happy,
and Democrats lost 63 House seats later that year. 

For most politicians, such a historic defeat would have been a
career-ender. But to Pelosi’s credit, she proved herself a survivor,
hanging on to control of the Democratic caucus. Perhaps even more
impressively, Pelosi managed to maintain control through three more
losing election cycles for House Democrats. 

In 2018, Democrats finally managed to win back control of the House,
with a big assist from a media desperately spreading conspiracy theories
about Donald Trump and “Russian collusion.” But even though Pelosi had
seemingly led her party out of the political wilderness, her re-election
as Speaker was far from assured. That was because 2018 also saw the rise
of the progressive movement within the Democratic Party with the
election of figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan
Omar of Minnesota, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan who demanded younger
leadership that would likely be more amenable to their demands. 

In order to hang on to power, Pelosi struck a deal with the progressives
that Donald Trump would come to call “the corrupt bargain.” In exchange
for their support of her Speakership, Pelosi would embrace their radical
agenda and far-left progressivism would become the de facto position of
the Democratic Party. Just as she had throughout her whole career,
Pelosi showed she was willing to sacrifice anything, even her own
previously-held policy beliefs, to cling to power. As part of this deal,
Pelosi also promised to step down by 2022 – one promise she actually
kept. 

Once back in power, Pelosi relentlessly politicized every last
legislative tool at her disposal. She used her position to strip
minority legislators from committee assignments and launch a series of
endless and largely baseless investigations into the Trump
administration. Most infamously, she is the only Speaker in history to
preside over two failed impeachments of the same president. Despite
constantly lecturing the country about “democratic norms” and the “death
of civility” in politics, Pelosi also directly contributed to deepening
political divisions, including throwing a temper tantrum and tearing up
President Trump’s State of the Union Address on national television. 

It was also during this time that the Democratic caucus descended into
the depths of left-wing extremism, as members of “the Squad” called for
defunding the police, spewed antisemitic rhetoric, and pushed ludicrous
environmental pipe dreams. Pelosi often quelled the protests of other
more moderate members, making clear that it would be AOC and her ilk,
not old-school more moderate Democrats, who would be the future of the
party. 

Voters delivered a stinging rebuke of this more radical direction in
2020, nearly erasing Democrats’ House majority even as Joe Biden won the
White House and Democrats flipped control of the Senate. Again, Pelosi
had clearly failed, and yet still she remained atop the House Democratic
caucus. 

Now working with a slim majority of just a handful of seats, the
progressive faction of the party was more powerful than ever, and Pelosi
was more than happy to oblige their every whim. Over the past two years,
House Democrats have passed the most extreme slate of legislation in
American history, ranging from a bill that would federalize elections
and mandate universal mail-in voting and ballot harvesting to multiple
multi-trillion-dollar spending packages that have sent inflation
skyrocketing. After vocally opposing big spending policies during the
Bush administration and ridiculously criticizing the Trump tax cuts for
being “fiscally irresponsible,” Pelosi has now overseen one of the
largest unfunded spending sprees in U.S. history – more than $10
trillion since Biden took office. 

Unsurprisingly, voters again fired Pelosi earlier this month and are
sending a Republican House majority back to Washington in January.
Pelosi’s second term as Speaker will end much the same as her first,
with the American people sending a clear message that she has failed. 

Of all the things Pelosi did in Congress, however, the most damning
indictment of her leadership might be the decline in the state of the
country under her watch. Her tenure saw the collapse of middle America,
the outsourcing of manufacturing, complete congressional abdication on
border security, and the erosion of the American Dream more generally. 

Arguably the most ignominious factor for her pseudo-retirement is to
whom she leaves her position. Instead of handing party leadership to
longtime second-in-command Steny Hoyer, her most loyal lieutenant, the
radical-left Congressman Hakeem Jeffries is poised to assume control of
the caucus. Nancy Pelosi may be riding off into the sunset, but she’s
leaving her party and her country in the darkness she has left behind. 

Andrew Abbott is the pen name of a writer and public affairs consultant
with over a decade of experience in DC at the intersection of politics
and culture. 

https://amac.us/newsline/society/pelosis-legacy-of-failure-and-political-
malfeasance/