Wagging the Dog: The Pelosi Sham

TW: House Speaker Pelosi was blamed by some Republicans for the demise of the bailout bill due to "partisan" speech on the floor Monday. Her speech was villified as either deeply hurtful causing spontaneous rebellion that afternoon by sensitive Congressmen (hear Rove below) or a devious Machiavellian move tipping her hand as a true opponent of the bill (see Hugh Hewitt/or the comments section on my Gingrich post). This has now been exposed as a "wag the dog" effort by those same Republicans.


From Politico:
"there was one issue on which the fractured caucus seemed to agree: The GOP leadership’s initial excuse for the $700 billion bailout bill’s demise — that some Republicans were upset by a partisan speech by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) prior to the vote — was a red herring...a parade of Republican lawmakers who opposed the bailout package denied the accusation against Pelosi by their own leadership, saying they voted against the legislation due to principle, not spite.

'The word came down from on high to drop it, so we’re dropping it,' said one GOP aide whose boss was told to stop attacking Pelosi."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/14156.html

TW: Obviously I am skeptical of the "principles" involved but they could not have it both ways, they are either principled or whiners, or maybe they are merely principled whiners.