One out of three. That’s the chances Democrats have of taking back the House of Representatives in this November’s elections according to Speaker John Boehner. And of course that would mean once again – Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (Oh, the humanity!)
What would a Pelosi II look like? What would it mean for the country? And most importantly, how can we keep it from happening? And why would John Boehner be so candid with his analysis?
Let me take the last one first. Some Republicans have been critical of John for even giving the Democrats a one in three chance. After all the Democrats did send out a fundraising letter trying to take advantage of “even the Republican Speaker gives us reasonable odds of taking back the House.”
I think John is concerned that most of the political attention and Republican fundraising effort to date has been towards winning the Presidency and the Senate. A lot of Republican supporters just assume that Republicans will maintain control of the House. Evidence of this overconfidence is that even though there are 242 Republicans and only 190 Democrats in the House, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) so far has outraised the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) $19.6 million to $18.1 million. The good news is that the Democrats (being Democrats) have spent more of their campaign money than Republicans, and therefore Republicans actually have more cash on hand.
Okay, so Pelosi II, what would it look like? The best way of predicting what a person or group of people will do in the future, is to examine what they’ve done in the past. And when Nancy Pelosi ran the House, we got bigger government, huge increases in spending, crippling debt, and growth-stifling over-regulation.
Specifically, we got an $868 billion so-called Stimulus Package that grew government exponentially, but not jobs in the private sector. We got a trillion dollar Obamacare which Pelosi inanely said needed to be passed so we could find out what was in the bill, and which the U.S. Supreme Court may well strike down as an unconstitutional power-grab. We got Dodd-Frank gargantuan overregulation of the banking and financial services industry which has resulted in businesses having great difficulty in borrowing money and expanding to create jobs. And we got Cap and Trade passed in the House, which would have given an already EPA-on-steroids even more power to stifle energy production and economic growth. (Fortunately, even Harry Reid’s Senate refused to pass it.)
Is there any chance that Nancy Pelosi has seen the error of her far-left ways and would govern more responsibly if given another chance? In my opinion, not a chance. First of all, it’s traditional in Congress that when you’re the Speaker and your party is rejected at the polls (and the Democrats took a shellacking in 2010) you graciously step aside and let a new person lead the troops. Not Nancy Pelosi. To virtually everyone’s surprise, she tenaciously held on to power and continues to rule Democrats in the House with an iron fist. Dissention in her ranks is punished immediately, and mercilessly. Her rhetoric is consistently hard-left, and class warfare is the order of the day.
Make no mistake, a Pelosi II would look a whole lot like a Pelosi I. And therefore it must be avoided at all cost. The best way to ensure that we don’t have a Speaker Pelosi future is for Republicans to clearly articulate a positive vision for our nation’s future, and fairly and accurately remind folks what Pelosi did in the past, and by implication, what she’d do in the future. And be sure to emphasize what a truly nightmare scenario it would be, if once again we had Nancy Pelosi controlling the House, Harry Reid the Senate, and Barack Obama the Executive Branch of government (and appointing Supreme Court Judges for four more years.)
Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.
