Nancy Pelosi: Douchebag And Proud

Posted by: Tristan

A profile piece by Politico.com illustrates Nancy Pelosi’s defiant attitude when it come’s to the nation’s unflattering perception of her.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is one of the most despised political figures in the country.

And, frankly, she doesn’t give a damn.

“No, I don’t care,” Pelosi told POLITICO last Thursday, laughing heartily as she walked beneath the Capitol dome and plunged into a crowd of tourists.

While Pelosi may be secure in being despised, she’s somewhat less secure about being trusted.

Mention of the “trust” question halted the click-clack of Pelosi’s heels against Rotunda marble, and she turned to face the reporter who posed the question.

“I don’t know about ‘trust’ — I think I’m trusted,” she said.

“I certainly want to be trusted. I’m not particularly concerned if I’m liked.”

If this is the case, the House Speaker will be disappointed to learn that only a quarter of Americans say that they trust her. It gets worse.

Gallup now measures Pelosi’s unfavorability ratings at 48 percent — with her favorability index registering a paltry 32 percent.

That’s 12 points lower than her numbers were just six months ago, during the first flush days of the Obama administration. And it puts the most powerful woman in the country’s history on a par with Dick Cheney and only a few clicks better than Boehner, an unknown quantity to most Americans.

“Nancy Pelosi is not only vastly unpopular with the American public, but her credibility is waning within her own party,” said Ken Spain, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Fortunately for Pelosi, this unpopularity isn’t career-threatening.

Being speaker is, as she says, an inside job. Pelosi is insulated from the negative effects of low national poll numbers because she answers only to two micro-constituencies — her mostly affluent, overwhelmingly liberal Bay Area district and a 262-member Democratic caucus that respects, fears, follows and largely likes the 69-year-old workaholic.

Her fellow Democrats give her such resounding endorsements as “She’s OK” and “You don’t have to love her, but she’s good”.

Accountable only to the Bay Area and House Democrats, Pelosi has no constituency at CIA headquarters in Langley, VA.  In May, she accused CIA briefers of lying to her about how senior Al-Qaeda leaders were being interrogated.

“The CIA briefed me only once on enhanced interrogation techniques in September 2002 in my capacity as ranking member of the Intelligence Committee. I was informed then that the Department of Justice opinions had concluded that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques were legal. The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed.”

This contradicts the CIA record on the matter.

A report released last week directly contradicted Pelosi’s recollections of the briefing. The Director of National Intelligence’s report indicated that the speaker was in fact briefed about such techniques used on Zubaydah — one of three terrorist suspects subjected to waterboarding, an interrogation tactic that simulates drowning.

The DNI report said then-House intelligence Chairman Porter Goss, Pelosi — who was the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee — and two aides were told about “the particular EITs that had been employed” on Zubaydah.

Pelosi and her staff, along with some other Democrats, have maintained that House Democrats did what little they could to register objections to the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, but that the Bush administration wouldn’t or couldn’t be stopped.

Why the switch?  According to Rush Limbaugh, it’s fashion.

Rush Limbaugh has accused Pelosi of flip-flopping on waterboarding in order to make a “fashion statement.”

“She wears Armani clothes — fashionable; Botox shots — fashionable; she’s against waterboarding — fashionable,” Limbaugh said earlier this year. “Of course, after 9/11 she was for waterboarding! That was fashion then.”

Apparently Pelosi’s fellow Democrats are far more interested in providing political cover for her than digging up the truth of the matter.

Democrats recently marked up the 2010 intelligence bill, and Republican Pete Hoekstra offered an amendment in committee to require the CIA to make public an unclassified version of its records on Congressional briefings. It also would have required the CIA to disclose the information gleaned from those interrogations.

Democrats have spent years demanding a “truth commission” into interrogations, so you’d think such public disclosure would be welcome. Ah, that was when a different guy was in the White House and before Mrs. Pelosi had made her own veracity an issue. Suddenly, she’s all for secrecy. And sure enough, Intelligence Committee Democrats lined up to protect their leader and defeated the Hoekstra amendment on a party line vote. This follows Democratic rejection of a resolution by Utah Republican Rob Bishop to initiate a bipartisan investigation of Mrs. Pelosi’s accusation.

While she may have a safe-seat and a political party who tolerate her leadership, there is a way to get this douchebag out of the Speakership.  A Republican majority elected this mid-term election is, well, rather unlikely to elect this limousine liberal as their Speaker.