Caveat: I expect few of you will agree with this article, but it is posted as informational only!
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Speaker Pelosi

http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/InTheNews.aspx?ID=8460

Tuesday`s Democratic election victory was by any measure decisive, yet in the perspective of history also unsurprising. In the sixth year of a two-term Presidency, Americans rebuked Republicans on Capitol Hill who had forgotten their principles and a President who hasn`t won the Iraq war he started. While a thumping defeat for the GOP, the vote was about competence, not ideological change.


Read About It: Wall Street Journal

I think the indications are that Pelosi plans pragmatic leadership. People on both sides of the political spectrum should give her the chance.


By KEVIN DIAZ AND ROB HOTAKAINEN
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- Collin Peterson remembers when he invited Nancy Pelosi to Farmfest in August: Republican friends told him he was nuts to bring her to his conservative rural district in northwestern Minnesota.

She wore cowboy boots and ate pork chops on a stick. “She was a big hit,” said Peterson, a Democrat from the Red River Valley.

Pelosi, now expected to become the nation’s first female U.S. House speaker, is under intense pressure from competing factions in her party: Some liberals want her to eliminate President Bush’s tax cuts, spend more on social programs, perhaps even move to impeach the president. Centrists such as Peterson, who’s ready to take the reins of the House Agriculture Committee, want her to cut the national debt, avoid fights over gun control and help Democrats from Republican-leaning districts like his.

How Pelosi and Democrats like Peterson get along will be a clue to whether a Democratic-controlled Congress and a lame-duck Republican president will produce gridlock or meaningful results on the war in Iraq, immigration, health care and a host of other issues.

Peterson’s so-called Blue Dog Democrats could be the biggest threat to Democratic unity, but they also could be Pelosi’s bridge over the party divide on everything from taxes to abortion.

Peterson, talking this week as he prepared for a post-election duck-hunting trip, said he already knows the outcome.

“She gets it,” he said. “She’s going to govern from the center, and she will work with Republicans. There will be no getting even.”

Pelosi’s visit to Redwood County was the outgrowth of a personal and strategic friendship that could be a key to the Democrats’ fortunes as they return to power in Congress for the first time since 1994.

Many of the new Democratic faces in Congress, including that of Minnesotan Tim Walz, come from the party’s moderate center, not the “San Francisco liberal” wing that Pelosi represents.

In a post-election briefing in Washington, Republican pollster Ed Goeas predicted fiscally conservative Blue Dogs such as Peterson will be “a real force” in the new Congress. In the past they have swung deals with Republicans as well as Democrats.

But as Pelosi climbed the House leadership ladder, Peterson said he has consistently backed her for one reason: Only a liberal can tell liberals what to do.

He credits Pelosi for paving the way to electoral victory by convincing liberals in the party that they needed to listen to budget-minded centrists.

“We have a lot of very liberal people in our caucus,” Peterson said. “They’re misguided in my opinion, in a lot of areas.”

Peterson rates half the new Democratic caucus as liberal, and he expects them to exert pressure on Pelosi as well.

Newly elected Democrat Keith Ellison from Minneapolis is one example. “Republican-lite has failed us as Democrats,” Ellison said during his campaign. “I believe progressive values are better.”

But among the Democrats’ electoral gains this week are at least a dozen new potential Blue Dogs, Peterson said, making them almost a quarter of the Democratic caucus.

Peterson knows some Democrats are still furious with him for helping pass Republican legislation in 2003 creating a limited prescription-drug benefit under Medicare. For Peterson, the GOP carrot was millions of dollars in additional spending on rural hospitals.

Two years ago, when Peterson moved to the top Democratic post on the Agriculture Committee, some House Democrats complained that he wasn’t a reliable team player. He said they “let me have it for an hour and 20 minutes,” but made no move to block him. He had Pelosi’s backing.

Peterson’s partnership with Pelosi has also exposed him to Republican flak at home.

In October, a spokeswoman for Republican Senate candidate Mark Kennedy accused him of being “desperate for the approval of Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean and the liberals in Washington.”

So far, much of what Peterson has heard of Pelosi’s agenda suits him just fine: Raise the minimum wage, recommit to alternative fuels such as ethanol and return to the pay-as-you-go budget rules that helped produce balanced budgets in the 1990s.

“Those things sell,” he said. “Her message was a home run.”

Everyone deserves a chance, in that I agree. Many of these people however have less than distinguished track records in this regard, and bear watching.
Time will tell if Leopards can indeed change spots!

She will, of course, do some liberal things that you won't like. But if she is doing a good job, she will also have liberals periodically upset with her. She is doing a good centrist impression so far, but we'll see.

Leading is a lot different than being minority leader, a position that requires more rhetoric. I think she will do fine. Certainly better than the GOP has done the past six years.

I do not define "Liberalism" as a lack of common sense!...I'm flexable in this regard.

It is certainly possible that the AWB could come up again, but I don't know that it would have the votes to pass the House, much less the Senate. And I would hope that such a divisive topic would wait, even if the votes were there. It is vital for the Democrats to show they can govern, and at this point, that means restraining most liberal impulses and governing from the center. It was the center that gave control back to the Dems, and competence is what the center wants to see.

Personally, what I would like to see is the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but I realize that is not in the cards until the latter half of 2009, at the earliest. And probably more realistically not until military leadership itself asks for the repeal. And that *certainly* won't happen during the Bush administration.

The AWB is the primary concern. In any guise, it is gratuitous and ignores the base causes of social unrest, while denying the honest citizen a right, and giving the outlaw the upper hand.
As for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"?...It should in all conscience, be abolished.

I don't see anything in there about taking your 2nd amendment rights away...

http://www.democraticleader.house.gov/pdf/thebook.pdf

A persons voting record is the identifying fingerprint of their ideology, maus. Don't bother me with superfluous jingoism, but present me with facts.
She is rated "F" by every major gun rights organization, and has voted a straight anti-gun line in the Senate.
With that being said...I'm more than willing to give her the benefit of the doubt in her new job.

I see what you mean... Pelosi (and the Democrats in general) are very pro- gun control legislation... sucks, doesn't it... to have your rights stomped on?

http://www.gunowners.org/a110806.htm

Thank you, Frenchy. The fact that she has been a gun-control advocate, being a liberal representing San Francisco, should not be surprising. But she is in a different role now, so see how she does with it on the agenda now that she's the House leader before making judgment. Sounds to me, so far, like she has her priorities in order.

They're our rights, maus!...Every one of them.
It's incumbent for us as Americans to demand from our legislators, undying fidelity to them.