Earlier today, Yahoo! headlined a piece showing how in an interview with the Obama campaign’s CNN’s Candy Crowley, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi pulled a comment by her Senate counterpart, Mitch McConnell out of context.  Mrs. Pelosi contended that the Kentucky Republican “was talking about stopping, obstructing initiatives to create jobs, stopping initiatives that would show bipartisanship on the part of the president.”

Factcheck.org reminds us that:

McConnell’s fuller comments — including the vow to work with Obama “if he’s willing to meet us halfway on some of the biggest issues” and his statement that “I don’t want the president to fail; I want him to change” — contradict Pelosi’s claim that McConnell was speaking in the context of opposing any bipartisan initiatives or that he was outlining a position that Republicans would not support the president no “matter what the subject was.” One can argue about whether that turned out to be a Republican strategy or not, but that’s not what McConnell said.

Emphasis added.  Surely, given how frequently Democrats cite this McConnell quotation (in attempt to buttress their talking point of Republican intransigence), a journalist would have checked the record and know that those Democrats had pulled it out of context.  So, I went to the transcript.

Here’s how Miss Crowley responded to the House Democratic Leader’s comment:

Well, it is — I guess, the reason I’m asking it is so many people have pointed to, you know, when Mitch McConnell said that his number one goal was to see that the president was a one-term president. The president has now committed to you and others that he wants to do what he can to help turn the House Democratic. Isn’t that kind of the same thing?

And Crowley does indeed seem aware of how frequently folks trot out the McConnell comment.  Not that she says, “many people have pointed to” it, yet seems oblivious that most of those “many people” have pulled it out of context.  She didn’t do his journalistic due diligence to see if the claim were accurate, taking a Democratic talking point at face value.

At least she did acknowledge the president’s focus on turning the House Democratic. (more…)

Just caught this in a Washington Examiner editorial on Nancy Pelosi’s determination to stay on as House Democratic Leader:

Just look at Pelosi’s record as speaker. When she first took the gavel on Jan. 3, 2007, the federal government was on track to spend just $2.7 trillion that year. The federal deficit was a mere $160 billion, and the cumulative national debt was $8.7 trillion. Only 7 million Americans were unemployed, and the nation’s unemployment rate was just 4.6 percent.

Four short years later, when Pelosi handed the gavel back to the Republicans, the country looked a bit different. Spending had soared to $3.6 trillion. The federal deficit was $1.3 trillion, and the national debt was $14 trillion. Fourteen million Americans were unemployed, and the unemployment rate had almost doubled to 9.1 percent.

Wonder why Democrats don’t hold this politician to account for her record.

The San Francisco Democrat announced today she’s staying on as House Democratic Leader.  Ed Morrissey thinks this “sounds like a pretty bad idea for a couple of reasons“:

First, the most likely successors to Pelosi will come from current leadership within the caucus, which isn’t exactly a youth movement.  Steny Hoyer has the inside track for Pelosi’s job, and he’s 73 years old, one year older than Pelosi herself.  Jim Clyburn might make a bid for the leader position and become the first African-American to chair a House party caucus, but he’s 72 years old.  John Larson, the caucus chairman, is a relative youngster at 64 years old.  None of these leaders will gain much more than pension benefits by waiting another two years.

Second, another two years gives Republicans another two years to make Pelosi the face of the party.  Every Democrat in a purple-to-red district who votes for another Pelosi term will end up having to defend that vote in the next midterm election.  Without Obama at the top of the ticket, the turnout in 2014 is going to look somewhat different than 2012, and some of those new freshmen coming into the House on a platform of change might not be able to explain why their first vote was to support a sclerotic and failed status quo within their own party.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.  Contrast the ages of the House Democratic leadership with that of the House Republicans.  Speaker John Boehner at 62, is the oldest, two years younger than the youngest Democrat in their leadership.  House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is 49.  House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy is just 47.

UPDATE:  Writing before Mrs. Pelosi decided to stay on for another term, Townhall’s Guy Benson offered that he’d “be amazed if she stays on as minority leader.  She’s unpopular and polarizing, and she’s presided over two consecutive unsuccessful cycles for House Democrats.”  Well, the unpopular and polarizing leader is staying on.

Had an interesting thought while corresponding with a conservative blogress about House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to expostulated that Republican exploit Jews by basing their support for Israel on “tax cuts for the wealthy.”

This isn’t the first time Mrs. Pelosi has said something silly.

Our friends in the legacy media attack former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for saying things far more sensible than the liberal pabulum coming out of Mrs. Pelosi’s mouth.

Do wonder if the Democrat doesn’t watch her discourse because she knows more “mainstream” journalists won’t magnify her mistakes.

In their campaign focused on attacking Mitt Romney’s personal life that he’s a rich guy who, in high school, was a bully who cut some guy’s hair, then, as a young father, put the dog on the car roof as the family motored away on its summer vacation, Democrats do occasionally hit on some policy issues, and often in the oddest contexts.

Even (especially?) in those contexts, they do seem to dwell on one issue in particular, that Republican economic policy is little more than cutting the taxes of wealthy Americans  (while ignoring the “middle class”).

As I was quickly scanning the blogs this afternoon, I caught Scott Johnson’s report on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s interview with Bloomberg’s Albert Hunt and found the top House Democrat doing just that.  When Hunt asked Mrs. Pelosi whether she thought Barack Obama “do as well with the Jewish vote this time as he did last time”, she suggested that Republican support for Israel really wasn’t about Israel:

But I – I think that he will. I think that he will, because the fact is when the facts get out. You know, as many of the Republicans are using Israel as an excuse, what they really want are tax cuts for the wealthy. So Israel, that can be one reason they put forth.

. . . .

Well, that’s how they’re being exploited . . . .

Huh?  A real, “accountable”, reported would have asked her how she made that leap.   Or would have pressed her on this claim of “exploitation.”  What a narrow world view she has.

Why do top Democrats refuse to address Republican policies on the merits and always bring it back to “tax cuts for the wealthy”?

FROM THE COMMENTS:  AndyN posits that “if you trace this ‘reasoning’ back to its source, isn’t she saying that advocating for tax increases on the rich means you don’t support Israel?” Indeed!

On Facebook, super-sweet left-wing blogress Pam Spaulding links this article from the Washington Blade, Pelosi vows to drop DOMA defense in Democratic House:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) vowed to drop congressional defense of the Defense of Marriage Act in court if Democrats retake control of the House in November.

Um, Nancy, please do tell me why you don’t bring up DOMA repeal when you were Speaker and had a 76-vote (256 Democrats to 178 Republicans) majority in the House.  We wouldn’t have to worry about litigating this issue if Congress had repealed the legislation.

RELATED: When they had a majority, House Democrats never voted on repealing DOMA, yet now they’re campaigning on Obama’s support of same-sex marriage

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.