Pelosi’s errors speak volumes about Democrats
The next speaker of the U.S. House will be from California.
Only it won’t be Democrat Nancy Pelosi of San Francesco, who has become toxic following the Trump impeachment fiasco.
And it certainly won’t be Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, chairman of Pelosi’s House Committee on Deceit, Dirt & Deception. Schiff spread so many lies in the impeachment process that even his lies told lies.
But the next speaker just might be California Rep. Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, the GOP minority leader, when — and if — the Republicans win back enough seats to re-take control of the House.
And there is a good chance that they can in 2020 now that Pelosi’s impeachment scheme has blown up in her face.
Pelosi, who prides herself on her parliamentary skills, should have taken her own advice and not moved to impeach until she had a solid case of presidential wrongdoing and bi-partisan support.
She had neither but went ahead anyway, caving to pressure from the leftist radicals in the House, led by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her supporters, who warned Pelosi of consequences if she did not act.
One of those consequences might have been a move to oust Pelosi as speaker, which the Democrats might still do — barring her resignation — if they are still in control following the next election.
Ironically, only months earlier Pelosi had been dismissive of AOC and her allies — Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, all of whom called for Trump’s impeachment.
“They’re four people and that’s how many votes they’ve got,” Pelosi sniffed.
In the end Pelosi, 79, the first woman speaker in history, was pushed into impeachment by AOC, a 29year-old freshman who had been tending bar before winning a surprise election.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez not only frightened Pelosi, she spooked fellow New Yorker Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, as well by raising the possibility of running against him in 2022.
AOC and her group had enough influence — if not actual votes — to force Pelosi to propose the totally partisan impeachment even though it went against her basic political instincts.
Not only did Pelosi and impeachment fail, it failed in spectacular fashion when the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate — with only Sen. Mitt Romney objecting — voted to acquit the president.
Speaking of Romney, notice how the progressives, who hated and mocked him when he ran for president in 2012 against the sainted Barack Obama, are now fawning all over him for turning against Trump. The same goes for John Bolton, a despised target of the left, who is suddenly a hero for also breaking with Trump.
Such is the state of American politics, and it will get worse before it gets any better.
The Democrats and the progressives who have run the government for so long are not used to being challenged, let alone beaten and humiliated by a rude and shrewd street brawler from New York.
The Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have used every underhanded scheme and device they could to destroy Trump, and they all failed.
All the while, Trump, mocked and ridiculed by the left as a braggart and a blowhard, has staggered his opponents with his list of economic, domestic and foreign policy achievements, including the killing of three top terrorist leaders.
The Democrats would be wise to get off the hate train and come up with substance before the November election, if it is not already too late. Otherwise Trump will be re-elected, no matter who runs against him, and the GOP will carry the Senate and retake the House.
The Democrat Party is in a tailspin and that is not good. The country needs a vigorous two-party system that can debate differences without hate and rancor. It is the way Democrat House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill used to seek civility and middle ground with Republican President Ronald Reagan.
Tip O’Neill might have thrashed a Ronald Reagan state of the union speech, but it would have been done in the privacy of his office, and not ripped it up in the House chamber for all the world to see.
A verbally challenged Donald Trump may not be a glib Reagan, but Pelosi certainly is no Tip O’Neill.
Rather, Pelosi is the sullen teenager whose father just took her cellphone away. The Democrat Party is like that, too.