WP,pg1: Nancy Pelosi: The Woman Who Would Be Speaker

[DeepModem Mom]

The Woman Who Would Be Speaker
Uncompromising Pelosi Set to Seize Opportunity
By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 21, 2006; Page A01


House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi works a phone bank in Sacramento with Phil Angelides, the Democratic candidate for governor of California. (Rich Pedroncelli-Associated Press)

.... if the Democrats win, experts say, much credit is due this 66-year-old woman, whose notable fundraising abilities (she raised $50 million this election cycle) and scorched-earth strategy of refusing to negotiate with the GOP have put her on track to become the first woman to be speaker of the House.

Dismissed by her critics as too liberal, too elitist and too lacking in gravitas, Pelosi, serving her 10th term, has proved to be a tough-minded tactician who has led her caucus from the political center and kept the fractious House Democrats in line. Pelosi and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) rarely work together, and the Democrats voted along party lines 88 percent of the time last year -- the most unified voting record in 50 years -- according to a Congressional Quarterly study. By hanging together, the Democrats have thwarted many GOP initiatives, including the centerpiece of Bush's second-term agenda, restructuring Social Security.

That approach, while emboldening the Democrats, has earned Pelosi the enmity of House Republicans, who claim she is an obstructionist. Pelosi, who is married to a wealthy San Francisco businessman and wears designer suits, is a favorite target of conservatives. Throughout the campaign, Republicans have sought to scare voters by portraying Pelosi as a liberal extremist who would be weak on national security and prone to raises taxes if her party were back in control....

***

Even before the Democrats' disappointing showing in the 2002 midterm elections, Pelosi began making calls to line up support for a minority-leader bid, in case then-Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) decided to step aside to run for president. Within days of Gephardt's decision to retire from the House, she locked up the post convincingly, by a vote of 177 to 29.

She took charge with a burst of energy and quickly developed a Democratic message that highlighted shortcomings in the Bush agenda. Later, she criticized the administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. Her strategy was to unite Democrats behind non-threatening, core issues such as the minimum wage, health care, Social Security and energy independence while steering clear of divisive social issues such as abortion rights and gun control....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102001471.html

[SaveAmerica]

1. Check out this paragraph; restructuring or dismantling?

They make it seem like house dems kept George from fixing social security instead of trashing it.

"Dismissed by her critics as too liberal, too elitist and too lacking in gravitas, Pelosi, serving her 10th term, has proved to be a tough-minded tactician who has led her caucus from the political center and kept the fractious House Democrats in line. Pelosi and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) rarely work together, and the Democrats voted along party lines 88 percent of the time last year -- the most unified voting record in 50 years -- according to a Congressional Quarterly study. By hanging together, the Democrats have thwarted many GOP initiatives, including the centerpiece of Bush's second-term agenda, restructuring Social Security."

[Clark2008]

4. Yeah - write them and say they should have used

dismantling.

[bemildred]

2. Could be "President Pelosi"

Once we impeach the two uber-weasels.

[annabanana]

3. Here is her pledge for the "first 100 hours" as speaker!!

Nancy has promised that we are going to reverse six years of their regressive and despicable insults to America, in the first

....................... 100 HOURS !!! ...........................


She is going to:

...implement ALL the 911 commission recommendations immediately. Every one. Showing the real commitment to Homeland Security.

...Reverse the despicable legislation forbidding the government to negotiate drug prices, and make it mandatory that the Director of Health and Human Services negotiate for the lowest price of all prescription drugs, just like the VA does for veterans. Forcing the drug companies to compete.

... we are going to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour and end nine years of republican disgrace. Holding American workers in poverty, while lavishing themselves with 9 pay raises amounting to a total pay increase of $30,000.

...we are going to immediately rescind the tax cut windfalls to the 2006 modern day pirates of big oil. And transfer that money to reduce college tuitions by 50%, so that college is once again part of the American dream, not the unaffordable nightmare.

...we are going to institute fiscal sanity again by immediately instituting pay-go. Just like every business and family home in America has to balance their checkbook, the government will be bound by the same constraints. The only way a program or initiative will be funded is if something else is cut or the means is found to pay for it. No more borrowing from China to fund corporate profit giveaways or highways to nowhere.


This promise of Nancy and Harry Reid backing her in the Senate, is not known and it is insane that it isn't. We need to be insulting every republican blowhard with this for the next three weeks. We have to sloganize it so it gets known to voters across the nation and repeated at every water cooler. So they literally can't wait for November 7th. Imagine, the Democrats first 100 hours will change America. The candidates should be repeating this ad infinitum.

There is no comeback for it. It makes the republican 100 days pledge of 1994 look like a joke. This promise of action is unprecedented and as noble as the flag flying over our land in its mission and purpose.

And it is once again the DEMOCRATS, who will be leading this charge to undo the untold damage of another republican administration.

Let's get this out there everywhere. Encourage your representatives to be using it. And we will send these moral values reprobates to the republican graveyard where they belong, in deserving and record setting humiliating numbers!!! ...This will do it.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. This is important -- thanks for posting! nt

[SharonAnn]

6. 66 yr old woman "lacking in gravitas"? or lacking in testosterone?

Methinks that's a very sexist remark.

She's very professional, very capable, very poised, very polished.

And, obviously, she's experienced.

So, "gravitas"? Do they mean a white man, with gray hair is the only type that has "gravitas"?

Hmmmm.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

7. K&R. i heard some "analyst" trying to scare the ex-repuke base...

They were saying, "Pelosi might become third in line for the presidency, if Dems. take a majority." I thought, third in line hell, I'd like to see her FIRST in line, as her husband becomes our FIRST, first-gentleman in the White House.