Nancy Thought She Could Get Away With Lying
When one blogger caught the unhappy Barney Frank lying about his record and trying to “to re-write history with respect to the role he played in helping enable the collapse of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae,” I wrote:
In the past, he could get away with it because the media watchdogs, ever eager to pounce at the slightest Republican indiscretion, gave Democrats a pass whenever they misrepresented their own record. . . . It seems that Barney is living in a pre-YouTube world where . . . the MSM would be little likely to dig around into [a Democrat's] past statements to corroborate or contradict his present claims.
Seems the woman the Massachusetts Democrat helped elected as House Speaker has not realized how new media have transformed the political landscape. She seemed entirely unprepared for anyone to challenge her recollections of her past actions and knowledge.
Simply put, she thought she could get away with misrepresenting the record probably because she assumed the MSM was behind the real goal–”getting” George W. Bush and his “minions.”
Perhaps, she assumed the Administration, equally eager (in her mind) to undermine its Republican predecessors, would back her up on this. But, she ran into the fundamental decency of the man the President tapped to head the Central Intelligence Agency. While a partisan Democrat, Leon Panetta is also an honest man who plays fair with the opposition.
“Getting” Republicans (and by extension, holding onto power) has not been the driving force of Panetta’s political career, rather it’s been governing, albeit in a liberal fashion.
Perhaps because he is a fellow partisan and they served together as part of the California delegation in Congress, Pelosi thought he’d vouch for her. Instead, as Nina Easton put it, he “threw her an anchor.”
I believe that was in part because he wouldn’t lie or otherwise deceive even to protect a fellow Democrat. Some have speculated that Panetta may have been acting at the behest of the Administration. Asking what White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel knew about the letter the CIA Director wrote on Friday defending his agency against Pelosi’s accusations, Bill Kristol wonders if the White House wants a “chastened Pelosi” as Speaker or seeks to replace her with someone else.
Whatever the case, if Pelosi were expecting the White House and Administration to back her up out of partisan loyalty, her fellow Democrats did not come through. They may just be trying to cut their losses, realizing that the truth would come out and did not want to be seen as defending a dishonest Democrat (so tying the President to her lies), particularly because this story is not going away.
Indeed, Jennifer Rubin doesn’t think the Speaker can “shut the door” on the controversy engender by her fellow partisans’ zeal to “get” Bush:
How does she do that, exactly? Well, I suppose she could say, “I made a mistake; I was told about waterboarding.” But that’s not really an option if she wants to preserve the patina of political respectability. I guess she could say again what she did on Friday which is, in effect: “Well, when I said the CIA lied, I didn’t mean the CIA was lying. I meant Bush lied.” So far that hasn’t flown and Republicans, the Sunday talk shows, the mainstream media and, come to think of it, Mark Penn are all still buzzing about it.
In short, Nancy Pelosi has put herself in a pickle. As long as she remains in power, she hurts her party, helping further its erosion. She wouldn’t be where she is if she had not been to eager to undermine the former Administration. And if she had appreciated the changes in the media landscape and the decency of one of her former congressional colleagues.
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Here’s part of it too. The Dems think that as long as they point to the Bush years, they can do whatever they want. It is all an illusion. Nancy did it last week by basically saying, I’m not lying but even if I did, Bush lied too!!! WTF? It is such a playground argument.
For the sake of argument, lets say that Bush and/or his people intentionally misled us on Iraq…(not true but playing devil’s advocate). That was years ago and Nancy lied last week. Then lied again. And then lied about lying. Then blamed the CIA for her lie. Even if she said, “OOPS, yeah I forgot about that briefing. I didn’t say anything back then because I didn’t know how serious it was” this wouldn’t be such a big deal.
The Dems and their followers are now pissed because the media is slowly turning away from them too. Granted they are not turning towards the Republicans but maybe, just maybe, some reporters will be neutral on this on and just report the facts. Fact being, Nancy lied.
Comment by BC — May 18, 2009 @ 9:35 pm - May 18, 2009
How pathetic and sad can you be having to look back to your notes to find what you have said on a matter not 5 minutes before?
Comment by ThatGayConservative — May 18, 2009 @ 9:39 pm - May 18, 2009
Pathetic, sad, Pelosi…sounds about right. It is getting so interesting that these high powered Dems cannot speak without a script. Granted, W. was not the best at vocabulary, but he could speak off the cuff when he was passionate about something. Thats how people got hooked by Clinton too. All this fumbling and bumbling when you can’t find the script or the teleprompter is off is getting ridiculous!
Comment by BC — May 18, 2009 @ 11:57 pm - May 18, 2009
You need to recall something important about Democrats…when given the opportunity, they eat their own!!! The other important item to remember is that some Democrats have ethics; i.e., Panetta wasn’t going to cave in just to preserve Nancy’s ego mania about being Speaker of the House. However, its all out in the wash now. I am going to thoroughly enjoy how this turns out. Pelosi has hung herself on the horns of a dilemma which is as black and white as it gets. Somebody lied. If it isn’t Panetta then who could it be…humm…let’s see.
Comment by Duffy - Native Intelligence — May 19, 2009 @ 12:31 am - May 19, 2009
Nice to “return to the world” and see that Two-Face Pelosi hung herself in my absence. Sweeeet.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — May 19, 2009 @ 1:02 am - May 19, 2009
Watched part of a fawning documentary on the Kennedys just a bit ago. It occurred to me that if Pelosi would just hide out at the Kennedy compound for a while, everything will blow over and nobody will care anymore.
Plus, she’ll emerge with a shiny new coat of Teflon.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — May 19, 2009 @ 4:17 am - May 19, 2009
[...] away with it. It occurred to me that we outside the beltway and the business of politics are always confused why [...]
Pingback by Stones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e68v2 — May 19, 2009 @ 6:42 am - May 19, 2009
Welcome back, ILC
Comment by The Livewire — May 19, 2009 @ 7:12 am - May 19, 2009
Thanks, TL!
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — May 19, 2009 @ 10:17 am - May 19, 2009
“Some have speculated that Panetta may have been acting at the behest of the Administration.”
This is overthinking. She attacked the CIA – his institution. It will turn on him if he doesn’t defend it.
Comment by MJ — May 19, 2009 @ 10:43 am - May 19, 2009
“I believe that was in part because he wouldn’t lie or otherwise deceive even to protect a fellow Democrat.”
That seems like a rather optimistic take on Panetta’s character. Heaven knows we wouldn’t want a CIA Director who’d lie or deceive!
It seems vastly more likely, however, that he is either (a) defending the bureaucracy that he heads, or (b) defending the President he serves, by opening some distance between Obama and Pelosi’s sinking ship.
Comment by drank — May 19, 2009 @ 11:52 am - May 19, 2009
obamba wants her gone and this is their way of doing it. who they replace her with, GOD help us all. remember, liberals, we are all in this together, and we will all go down together.
Comment by southernsue — May 19, 2009 @ 12:52 pm - May 19, 2009
Like I said in a previous post, the only way we could get San Fran Nan to tell the truth is to just try waterboarding her.
The best part is, five years from now, she won’t be able to remember that we did anything to her, right?
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — May 19, 2009 @ 1:00 pm - May 19, 2009
I like Charlie Rangel to replace Pelosi. He hasn’t done anything wrong has he?
Comment by Gene on Pennsylvania — May 19, 2009 @ 6:39 pm - May 19, 2009
[...] television the other night but no one seems to have noticed. On the May 18 edition… Nancy Thought She Could Get Away With Lying – gaypatriot.net 05/18/2009 When one blogger caught the unhappy Barney Frank lying about his record [...]
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