Commenting yesterday on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s contention the the federal government should shut down a non-unionized private sector plant in South Carolina, Ed Morrissey  offers a nice synopsis of the conservative view of government:

Government should have no interest in whether a particular plant is unionized or not, let alone assert authority in this area.  Government exists to uniformly enforce the law without bias.  Agencies like the NLRB want to use the color of authority to favor unions because they see that as a preferred social-engineering outcome — whether or not workers themselves want union representation or not.

We have come far from the legitimate exercise of government in this and many other areas.  It’s time to demand a return of government to its proper boundaries, and perhaps eliminating altogether those agencies that have arrogated to themselves the power to impose their preferred social prescriptions through the abuse of agency authority.  That would include the NLRB, the EPA, and a number of other federal entities.

Emphasis added.  Exactly.  This helps explain — in a most succinct manner — the rise of the Tea Party.

With President Obama calling Nancy Pelosi ”one of the best Speakers of the House this country ever had,” when, Americans,”rated her one of the worst (Gallup),” the Democrat, blogress Susan Duclos contends, “shows a glaring disconnect .  . . from the American public as a whole.”

During Mrs. Pelosi’s tenure as “the nation’s 60th Speaker,” Doug Powers reminds us, “the national debt shot up approximately $5 trillion — more than the first 57 Speakers combined“.

Wonder if our friends in the MSM will start talking about the Obama bubble as they once talked about the bubble in which his predecessor found himself.

I think we now know who Nancy Obama is.

(H/t Memeorandum.)

Just caught this in a post at one of my favorite blogs:

Remember when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosic called the burgeoning Tea Party protests “astroturf“?

Well, now House Minority Leader, the San Francisco Democrat is singing a different tune as she sees protests more in line with her ideology.  She has praised the latest round of anti-Wall Street (at least I think that’s what they’re against) protests, heralding them “for their spontaneity.” About this movement, she added, “It’s independent … it’s young, it’s spontaneous, and it’s focused. And it’s going to be effective.”

Well, these rallies aren’t quite as spontaneous as Mrs. Pelosi contends:

A liberal organizer told the Daily Caller on Thursday afternoon that he paid some Hispanics to attend “Occupy DC” protests happening in the nation’s capital.

The DC attended the protest event, an expansion of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement that began in New York City. Some aspects of the protest, it turned out, are more Astroturf than grassroots.

One group of about ten Hispanic protesters marched behind a Caucasian individual from the DC Tenants Advocacy Coalition, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting rent control in Washington, D.C.

Asked why they were there, some Hispanic protesters holding up English protest signs could not articulate what their signs said.

Interviewed in Spanish, the protesters told conflicting stories about how their group was organized. Some said it was organized at their church, and that they were there as volunteers. Others, however, referred to the man from the DC Tenants Advocacy Coalition — the only Caucasian in the group — as their “boss.”

TheDC asked that organizer whether he was paying the group to attend the protest, and he conceded that some protesters “aren’t” volunteers.

Mrs. Pelosi couldn’t be reached for comment.

Glenn Reynolds who tipped me off to this story quipped, “If it were a Tea Party it doing this it would make national news.”

Indeed.

UPDATE:  Glenn links more evidence of Astroturf: (more…)

Three days ago, Ed Morrissey joined Time’s Jay Newton-Small in asking if the House Speaker responsible for the greatest accumulation of debt in U.S. History had been marginalized:

Despite losing the midterm elections on the issue of spending and deficits, Pelosi wondered aloud in a White House strategy meeting why debt-ceiling negotiations had to involve spending cuts at all, surprising everyone else in the room . . . .

As the leader of a House caucus in a clear minority, Pelosi has already become largely irrelevant, especially after losing the midterms in such spectacular fashion.  Now Newton-Small says that Barack Obama might make her even more obsolete by directly dealing with her lieutenant, Steny Hoyer, to get the moderate Democrats on board any deal . . .

Do wonder if Mrs. Pelosi has taken a gander at the figures and charts showing an explosion in deficit spending under her watch.  The resourceful Jim Hoft has the charts, one of which I reproduce to show that the deficit decreasing under the Republican Congresses of the middle George W. Bush years, skyrocketed when Mrs. Pelosi took the gavel in the House of Representatives in 2007:

The arrow points to the deficit of the first budget passed by a House helmed by the San Francisco Democrat.

Has she been that removed from the politics of the last two-and-and-half years to remain so clueless about growing public concerns about excessive government spending?

Earlier today, Jim Geraghty reported that yesterday the president said “the need for a budget deal to avoid a” government shutdown, “We are prepared to put whatever resources are required in terms of time and energy to get this done. But that’s what the American people expect.”

So, one wonders why the Democrat skipped town this morning to discuss “green energy” in Philadelphia and “deliver remarks at the National Action Network’s Keepers of the Dream Awards Gala, hosted by Reverend Al Sharpton and the National Action Network” in New York.  Not quite sure how attending those events will give him the opportunity to devote those resources to hammering out a budget agreement with congressional leaders.

We may see a partial government shutdown if the president and Congress do not agree on a plan because, as Mark Tapscott put it, “under the previous Democratic majority when for the first time ever, House leaders decided not to follow the law and enact a 2011 budget.”  Tapscott then provides a timeline provided by Don Seymour, a senior aide to House Speaker John Boehner on the failure of the 111th Congress (AKA the Pelosi-Reid Congress) to pass a budget.

The president has asked Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “to join him at the White House for an evening meeting.”  He could have accomplished a lot more if he spent the day in Washington trying to forge an agreement.  Or, if he spent more time than just “three minutes” on the phone with the Speaker.

At least Boehner has a plan, announcing today that House Republicans will vote tomorrow “on a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running for another week while cutting $12 billion from the budget“.  If the Senate fails to act and if we do see a government shutdown, the blame will not lie with the Republican House, but with the president for not staying in Washington to work out a deal and with former Speaker Pelosi and Reid for failing to pass a budget in the last Congress, as the law required. (more…)

Ed Morrissey explains:

If you had to pick the poster child for budgetary irresponsibility over the last few years — and certainly for 2010 — it would have to be former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Not only did Democrats under her Speakership raise discretionary spending 18% in three years, not only did she pass a Pay-Go law and then fail to adhere to it even once, Pelosi became the first Speaker since Watergate to fail to pass a budget resolution for a fiscal year.  In 2010, despite having a 77-seat majority in the House, a Senate which her party held by 18 seats, and a Democrat in the White House, Pelosi failed — or refused — to pass a budget for FY2011.  Instead, she pushed continuing resolutions in order to hide spending until after the midterms, and failed even then to pass a budget.

Read the whole thing.  (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE:  Wonder how often our media remind us that it was the failure of Mrs. Pelosi’s (and Mr. Reid’s) 111th Congress that has forced the 112th to pass continual continuing resolutions.

UP-UPDATE:  Jim Hoft reminds us of some facts:

When Speaker Pelosi took over Congress the national deficit was $162 billion. When she exited in January 2011 it was at $1.29 Trillion dollars. Pelosi and Barack Obama even managed to triple the national deficit in his first year after the stimulus passed.

Pelosi says she’s ‘proud’ of Wisconsin Democrats who fled:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she supports the Democratic state senators in Wisconsin who left the state to stop a vote on curbing collective bargaining rights for unionized public employees.

UPDATE: Remember when the Democratic leader had “concerns about some of the language that is being used” by a handful of Tea Party protesters. Wonder if she has similar concerns about the language her ideological allies have been using in Wisconsin.  And now that she’s expressed support for the antics in the Badger State, we can soon expect her colleague Barney Frank to call on her to “differentiate” herself from the hateful signs comparing the Governor Walker to Hitler.

When Republicans and Democrats lose elections, they do the same thing, albeit in a slightly different manner; they blame Republicans.  Shortly, after their loss of Congress in 2006, Republicans began engaging in a bit of introspection, introspection which was intensified when they suffered further setbacks in 2008, coupled with the loss of the White House.

Introspective, many Republicans asked what had they done wrong (AKA “blaming” Republicans).  This week, we learned (yet again) that Democrats were doing something quite similar, pointing to Republican actions which caused their defeat in the 2010 elections.  And former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi trotted out the standard villain from their catalogue of demonology:  George W. Bush.

The San Francisco Democrat showed just how in denial she is on the day she handed over the gavelto the new Speaker, Republican John Boehner, when she listed her accomplishments, without considering that perhaps it just might have been those “accomplishments” which cost her that gavel.

Fascinating how the party accused of lacking the capability to admit its errors is the party which engages in introspection and the party supposedly composed of such smart folk is the one that refuses to question the merits of its policies — or accept that its policies (rather than the failings and/or machinations of its adversaries) could prevent its election.  Or secure its defeat.

Seems we’re going to have to keep that Pelosi Watch category up.  She’s like the guest who won’t leave.  And our mainstream media seem fascinated the Minority Leader, doing their utmost to keep the big-spending Democrat center stage.

Now, blogging on MIchelle Malkin’s page, Doug Powers informs us the Ms. Nancy has pulled out the standard excuse of her party in the Obama era: it’s W’s fault:

“We still would have lost the election because we had 9.5% unemployment. Let’s take it where that came from. The policies of George W. Bush and the Republican support for his initiatives, tax cuts are for the wealth, recklessness by some,” Minority Leader Pelosi told CNN.

Um, Nancy, if W’s policies were so bad, how come the economy didn’t go south until nearly one full year after your party took control of the House, with you as Speaker.

If she keeps talking like this, she’s sure to remain in the minority for a long time.

Contrasting the speech then-Minority Leader John Boehner gave in 2007 introducing the then-new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with the one Minority Leader Pelosi  gave today introducing Speaker Boehner, Byron York points out:

There were no laundry lists, no talking points.  Following that brief statement, Boehner went on to pay tribute to “the battle of ideas” that takes place in a democracy, and then he handed the gavel to Pelosi.  That was it.

Read the whole thing.  In the contrast to the brief speech the Republican gave, the former Speaker blathered on and on, offering a laundry list of Democratic accomplishments, on a day when Republicans were taking power in the House.  This was neither the time nor the place for Democratic grandstanding.

But, well, what can you expect from the current crop of Democrats.  Given Ms. Nancy’s behavior today, maybe we should retain our Pelosi Watch category, to keep an eye on this hyperpartisan who couldn’t even keep her caucus united in the vote for Speaker.  Nineteen Democrats . . .

. . . abandoned their party’s pick for speaker of the House, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a sign of their concerns about supporting the unpopular former speaker and of the difficulty she will have in marshaling her forces in legislative battles to come in the next two years. . . .

. . . the anti-Pelosi tally dwarfed the number of protest votes cast against leaders of both parties in the recent past, which never break into double digits.

Wonder how many of those 19 will be voting next week to repeal Obamacare.

Loved Michelle Malkin’s take on Nancy’s self-aggrandizing departure:

Pelosi won’t shut up: She’s breaking her arm patting herself on the back as 1st woman speaker, 1st Italian American speaker. Waves around kiddie human shields and cites litany of Nanny State “achievements” to spite GOP. Blathers about “fair prosperity.”

Update 2:00pm Eastern. She’s still going. Bitter clinger, clinging bitterly.

This is why we need someone with steel spine and no mercy.

Do hope House Republicans remember this spectacle in the coming months and treat Ms. Nancy accordingly.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Seems our reader  V the K sees Ms. Nancy’s attempt to rain on the Republicans’ parade as a reminder just how she’ll behave in the minority and how they should react:

Republicans should realize that they are going to take the same amount of crap from the liberal media no matter how much or how little they cut; so they should GO BIG OR GO HOME!

Good advice.

Recalling that she served as Minority Leader in the House when her party won back its majorities in 2006, outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi somehow seems to think that she’s capable of a do-over, oblivious to how, given the recent elections, redistricting is all but certain to favor Republicans.

Much as we Republicans enjoy deriding the San Francisco Democrat, we do recognize that she was an effective Speaker, particularly in the heyday of her party’s power in the heady days after President Obama’s inauguration when people thought it was a new dawn for the type of liberalism she espoused since at least she moved west to the City by the Bay.  She was able to push through a number of controversial initiatives, holding enough of her fractious caucus together to support measures of questionable value and extraordinary cost.

That was before November 2, 2010 when Democrats, at least those not “purposefully oblivious” to the reality of the results, finally recognized the political cost of those votes.

Recognizing that cost, those Democrats will be hard pressed to stand by their party’s leader.  In order to save their seats, many are likely break ranks to support conservative initiatives put forward by the incoming majority.

It’ll be interesting to see how many of Mrs. Pelosi’s caucus vote for her for Speaker when the 112th Congress convenes in January.  And how may vote with the Republicans when, in the words of incoming Speaker John Boehner, the House moves “quickly enough” on repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Remember what a crybaby the unhappy Barney Frank was in victory, unable to graciously acknowledge his opponent’s spirited, but, alas, unsuccessful campaign?  Well, as crass as the mean-spirited man from Massachusetts was in victory, his similarly septuagenarian party leader, outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is graceless in defeat.

Via JammieWearingFool, comes her commentary on her successor’s tears.

Incoming Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said incoming Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is “known to cry.”

“You know what? He is known to cry. He cries sometimes when we’re having a debate on bills. If I cry, it’s about the personal loss of a friend or something like that. But when it comes to politics — no, I don’t cry. I would never think of crying about any loss of an office, because that’s always a possibility, and if you’re professional, then you deal with it professionally,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) told the New York Times magazine.

She noted: ”I have deep emotions about the American people. If I were to cry for anything, I would cry for them and the policies that they’re about to face.”

How rich is this comment.  Couldn’t she just acknowledge the humanity of the man and many of us cry at emotionally challenging — or uplifting — moments?  Why does she have to use the occasion to try to lecture her partisan adversary on her superior temperament.  Well, if she she really believes what she says, she doesn’t lead by example.  Later in the post, JWF asks, “As to her claim she never cries over politics, how does she explain this performance?”  Yep, he’s got video of Pelosi crying over politics.

And her nastiness is on full display in her comment on the tears she claims she would shed.

Yup, he’s got the San Francisco Democrat demonstrating, by her own standard, some very unprofessional behavior.

About two months before the fall elections, I received a review copy of Rochelle Schweizer’s biography of the outgoing House Speaker, She’s the Boss: The Disturbing Truth About Nancy Pelosi.  I tried to finish it before those elections as I thought it would likely be remaindered soon after, but other obligations got in the way.  One thing which came clear as I read about the rise of the San Francisco Democrat was just how ruthless she can be, how determined she was as she climbed the political ladder and how much control she exercised over her caucus.

She did manage to push some pretty controversial votes through the House when she wielded the gavel.  But, with her party’s loss of over 60 seats earlier that month, her power is waning.  She will never again rule her caucus with the iron fist she exercised for the better part of the current Congress.

Yesterday, she did not receive the unanimous vote of that caucus in its leadership elections.  As Jonathan Allen and John Bresnaham wrote in Politico:

But the 43 votes against her reveal that a divided caucus — still reeling from the loss of at least 61 seats — will not be as pliable for the California Democrat as it once was.

There will be more votes in coming days on limiting Pelosi’s control of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Rules and Steering committees, but she is expected to win those fights, too. And there may be tough policy votes ahead in the new Congress, as House Republicans try to lure the anti-Pelosi forces to their side on key issues.

I daresay Minority Leader Pelosi won’t be able to hold her caucus together in the 112th Congress as she did in the 111th.  Those moderates who survived, but just barely, will want to avoid the fate of their colleagues who, through no choice of their own, won’t be returning to Capitol Hill next January.

In an article on outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s attempts to maintain control over her diminished Democratic caucus, Politico’s Jonathan Allen offers this telling passage:

The effort to tweak the rules and give rank-and-file Democrats more say over influential posts in the caucus reflects frustration over the fact that the Democratic leadership team will remain largely intact despite the Nov. 2 drubbing.

“People woke up the day after the election as afraid of Nancy Pelosi as they were the Monday before. And they shouldn’t be,” said one senior Democratic aide whose own remaining fear of retribution caused her to seek anonymity.

So, Nancy maintains an iron grip over her caucus and has decided to keep her leadership team intact despite the drubbing.   Couple this with a redistricting likely to benefit Republicans, looks like further GOP gains are on the menu for 2012.

UPDATE:  Over at Politico, Jonathan Allen and John F. Harris have a good analysis of why Democrats are keeping Nancy on as their party’s leader in the House.

From the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire:

“We didn’t lose the election because of me,” Ms. Pelosi told National Public Radio in an interview that aired Friday morning. “Our members do not accept that.”

Instead, the California Democrat attributes the loss of at least 60 seats to high unemployment and “$100 million of outside, unidentified funding.”

Always looking for someone else to blame, are we, Nancy?  Well, it does seem par for the course for your party.  Does seem that you guys are always looking for excuses when the answer should be obvious to anyone to who can read election returns and exits polls.  To paraphrase an expression from one of your party’s political operatives:

It’s the big-government policies, stupid.

Why is it that Democrats are always trying to find excuses for their losses?   Why do they never consider that their policies may be to blame?

RELATED:  ”Yeah, when the right-thinking folks get it wrong,” Glenn Reynolds quips, “it’s never their fault.”

Pelosi: ‘We haven’t really gotten the credit for what we have done’

FROM THE COMMENTS:  American Elephant begs to differ with the Speaker:

Yes, they have gotten credit for what they have done. That’s precisely why they are being fired en masse.

In February, Ed Morrissey pointed out that in making the case for the Democrats’ health care overhaul, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told us that is wasn’t really a health-care reform bill, but actually a jobs bill: “In arguing for the current version of ObamaCare, whatever that is at the moment, Nancy Pelosi claims that it will create four million jobs — or nearly half of all the jobs lost over the last two years:”

Well, Mrs. Pelosi, to paraphrase an expression (do hope you don’t mind), now that we’ve passed the bill and found out what’s in it, well, we find that it actually discourages work:

Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf said Friday that ObamaCare includes work disincentives likely to shrink the amount of labor used in the economy. . . .

As Capital Hill has noted previously, work disincentives will be particularly strong for older workers because both health care premiums and the law’s subsidies grow much bigger with age.

Further, the new health law will give some older households without access to employer care a big incentive not to earn too much. That’s because earning more than 400% of the poverty level would make them ineligible for subsidies that may be well in excess of $10,000 for couples.

As vote nears, Byron York finds, “Pelosi’s ratings fall to all-time low“:

A new Gallup poll finds that Nancy Pelosi’s favorable rating is 29 percent — the lowest it has been since Pelosi became Speaker of the House. Fifty-six percent of those surveyed have an unfavorable view of Pelosi.

She trails among independents where just 21 percent have “a favorable impression of her, while 58 percent have an unfavorable impression”.  She’s even slipping among Democrats.

Pelosi’s ratings are approaching the lows reached by former Speaker Newt Gingrich in his most unpopular days. In April 1997, Gingrich had a 24 percent favorable rating and a 62 percent unfavorable rating. If present trends continue, Pelosi is headed in that direction.

Yeah, but, that trajectory might change with the election results in two weeks.  She just won’t garner as much media attention should Democrats lose the House — nor be an a position to push unpopular legislation.

RElATED:  Glenn Reynolds links this: “More than a dozen House Democrats now want Pelosi out as Speaker.”

It’s not a sign of confidence in someone’s leadership when members of your caucus publicly announce that they’re not supporting you.  And now, we’ve got another Democrat running for reelection running away from Nancy Pelosi:

Another Democrat backed off supporting Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for Speaker, saying he’d prefer to see a member of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition in the Speaker’s seat.

Rep. Travis Childers (D-Miss.) joined the steadily growing ranks of centrist Democrats who have either pledged not to support Pelosi as their party’s leader, or have been noncommittal about their support for the San Francisco lawmaker.

Rep. Bobby Bright (D-Ala.) has also said he won’t vote for Pelosi, even “promoting that fact in a new campaign ad.” Speaking of campaign ads, this Democrat touts endorsements from groups who “wouldn’t have anything to do with a Nancy Pelosi supporter”:

Now, I’m just a-wonderin’, who this fella voted for for Speaker since his initial election in 2002. Given that Mrs. Pelosi has been the Democratic Leader since Marshall was sworn in, she would have been the Democratic candidate for Speaker in each of his four terms in Congress. Did ol’ Jim buck his party all four times?