Face It America. You Got Punked.
Suspicion is growing that Pelosi and the Democrats made no serious effort to pass the bailout bill, and that it failed at least in part because Pelosi tried to misuse it for political advantage.
Given the fact that the legislation was in fact a negotiated, bipartisan compromise, the first duty of the majority party is to line up its members to support the majority’s bill. But evidence is growing that the Democrats did no such thing.
As of yesterday, the Democrats’ House whip, Jim Clyburn said that he hadn’t even begun “whipping” Democratic representatives, and wouldn’t do so unless and until he got orders from Nancy Pelosi. Today, Democratic Congressman Peter DeFazio told NPR that he never was “whipped” on the bill. So Pelosi evidently left Democrats to vote their consciences–which is to say, vote against the bill if they thought it was politically necessary–while counting on Republicans to put the bill over the top- Power Line.
Rep. Peter deFazio (D-OR) told NPR that he was never whipped on the question.
The Pelosi speech.
The vicious, hyperpartisan and dishonest speech by Speaker Pelosi was not designed to bring the parties together or to gain any Republican votes.
It was designed to do the opposite.
In fact, corrupt Rep. Barney Frank even yielded an extra minute of his time to give the Democratic Speaker time to get all of her digs in at the opposition:
Karl Rove described Pelosi’s vicious speech this way:
“She had a huge impact on the vote. This was over five minutes of the most vicious partisan rhetoric. This is the kind of thing you expect to hear on the floor of the House from some insignificany partisan back-bencher. You do not expect to hear this from a leader. The Speaker of the House whose responsibility it is to set the bipartisan tone to get this bill passed. I was appalled by this.”
While the Speaker was making her speech on the floor, the head of the Congressional Democratic Campaign Committee was on National Public Radio basically saying the vote would be used against Republicans in the fall- K. Rove.
During the vote, Rahm Emmanuel, who served as a board member for Freddie Mac, one of the federal agencies behind the crisis, was monitoring votes on the floor. He took a leadership role in tanking the bill. “He was cheerleading us along, mothering the votes,” says the aide. “We wanted enough to put the pressure on the Republicans and Congressman Emanuel was charged with making it close enough. He did a great job.” –American Spectator.
Note the “motion to reconsider laid on the table Agreed to without objection.” If the Democrats had wanted this to pass, they would not have said that. The procedural guts of this is that any vote in the House can be “reconsidered” by a motion to reconsider that is in order from a member of the prevailing side for two legislative days. By tabling this, that option is off the table.
The simplest option for Pelosi would have been to wait an hour, watch the markets collapse for a while, scare 12 Democrats and hold a revote. Surely some Republicans would have participated in this –RedState.
After all was said and done and the vote failed to pass, with even Obama Campaign co-chair Jesse Jackson Jr. voting against the bill, the Democrats were cracking jokes with the press.
That’s right.
In the press conference after the vote Democratic leaders cracked jokes about the hurt feelings of the House Republicans.
This was all while the US stock market was the stock market was sliding some 700 points. It was the worst one day loss in history.
$1.1 Trillion was lost on the stock market yesterday.
(Excerpts taken from Power Line and Redstate)
More… The New York Post calls it “Nancy’s Disaster”.
Victor Davis Hanson sees faltering leaders and a McCain moment.
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