If ever there was a time to pity House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, this may be the time. It is a case of being careful what you ask for. She got her speakership through the election of some of the most rabid left-wing radicals in America. They are not small-d democrats. Much like the Nazi experience in Germany, these folks want to use the legal political process to gain a foothold, but they will push aside democratic traditions and institutions to gain permanent power. That is their goal. It is part of the far left’s political genetics.
The radical left’s ideology is both a threat to the Republic and a major headache for Speaker Pelosi. More than anyone in Washington, she must deal with them, their nutty demands, their foul mouths and their ability to dominate press coverage. While Pelosi and her leadership team attempt to show America a positive agenda of actions and legislation, these folks are consuming most of the oxygen in the room and tarnishing the Democrat brand.
While the more moderate liberal Democrats understand that impeachment FOLLOWS the findings of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the newly empowered radical left sees impeachment as a means of overthrowing a legal government by an unbridled political force-of-will – constitutional requirements be damned.
Already, three legislators have introduced “bills of impeachment.” The fact that there are yet no grounds for such action is immaterial. These radicals now have their call-to-arms in the proclamation of the most radical of the radicals, Representative Rashida Tlaib, “We’re gonna impeach the mother****er.”
Keeping impeachment fever from engulfing the Democratic Party is only one of Pelosi’s challenges. The Democratic Party has long depended on the Jewish community as significant part of its base. Part of the new diversity of the Democrat caucus is the election of legislators clearly opposed to everything Israel. They consider our strongest ally in the Middle East to be a terrorist state. Their sympathies are clearly with the Palestinians and Hamas.
They favor the BDS program against Israel – which stands for Boycott, Divest and Sanction. These are the kinds of actions that America usually imposes on rogue adversarial regimes, like North Korea and Iran, not allies.
These newbies on the Democrat side of the aisle undermine one of the favored anti-Trump political narratives – that he is a divider. As the untoward consequence of identity politics, the entire political strategy of these newly empowered radicals is founded on division. They are the promoters of all the “-isms” – with exaggerated-to-phony claims of racism, sexism and homophobia as the mainstays of their propaganda campaigns. Without seeing the irony of their own intolerance, they speak openly of the toxicity of the white male and express hostility toward people of faith.
Pelosi, as the leader of the Democratic Party, is an unabashed liberal, but she is also a pragmatic political realist. She well understands that her Party has drifted to the left just about as far as the American public will tolerate. If she is to lead her party to victory in 2020, she knows that there will have to be accomplishment on a popular legislative agenda. She will also have to establish that her Party can unify the nation.
That strategy became enormously more difficult – if not impossible — as the extremist elements dominate the news and brand the Democrats as the big government, tax-and-spend, cultural warrior and anti-patriotism party. Strident hatred of all things Trump, Republican and conservative is already wearing thin and producing a yet underappreciated backlash in fly-over America.
In is increasingly likely that it is the Democrats who will have to cave on the issue of border security. As along as Trump hangs tough – and if there are insufficient Senate Republicans to override a veto – the only way that all those government workers will be back on their jobs is for House Democrats to crack – just enough to support a Republican bill to fund Trump’s wall, barrier, fence or whatever one wants to call it.
If that is how it all plays out, Trump will become a triple-crown winner. He will get his funding, congressional Democrat unity will shatter like a dropped Ming vase – with the radicals going ballistic – and his prospects of re-election will increase. All this gives Trump very little incentive to cave.
I had written a previous commentary arguing that conservatism has become a divided movement within a divided Republican Party within a divided nation. The issue of the border wall has every prospect of dividing liberals within the Democratic Party and foster the re-emergence of the currently kowtowed moderate and conservative Democrats – and they are out there.
The radicals do not yet have enough power to drive the agenda in Congress, but they can cause incremental shifts. They will also have the benefit of a news media that will give them more than deserved coverage. The radicals will serve as foci for the scattered leftist rabble population. This was already seen in the publicity Tlaib received for her low-life remark and the praise she received from the radicals on social media – AND the surge of money into her campaign coffers.
It is no secret that the Democrat radicals desire and intend to change the Democrat Party to something more like the European left-wing socialist parties. They openly admit that much.
For the next two years, it is less likely that Pelosi will be leading a unified party than trying to keep it united – less the leader of the band and more the cattle herder.
So, there ‘tis.
