Posts Tagged ‘Nancy Pelosi’
May 25th, 2011 by John Feehery
Republicans can’t help but learn a few lessons from their loss last night in the New York 26 race.
They have had a hard time winning special elections, especially in the Empire State stretching back to 2006, and yesterday was no exception.
The first lesson, of course, is don’t pose for pictures on Craigslist, in the name of meeting new friends. If Chris Lee hadn’t done that, there wouldn’t have been a special election in the first place.
The second lesson is to beware of Democrats posing as Tea Party adherents. Jack Davis siphoned off enough of the vote to sink the GOP candidate. He said he was a Tea Party guy, but his Tea Party flavor leaned more to the latte crowd.
The third lesson is that the Democrats are very good at playing the Medicare card. Republicans? Not so much.
Republicans think they can go in and offer a total transformation of a senior’s program that is not only very popular, but for many voters, is their only lifeline. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, Chris Lee, Democrats, Economy, election, GOP, Government, health care, Jack Davis, medicare, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Paul Ryan, Politics, Presidential election, Republicans, spending, taxes, Tea Party
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, Politics, Presidential election, Promises, Theory, election, health care, spending, taxes | No Comments »
April 15th, 2011 by John Feehery
(Washington D.C.) In a stunning rebuke to President Obama, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and 111 House Democrats voted to kill a budget compromise that funded the government for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year.
Steny Hoyer, the House Minority Whip, supported the President’s budget, as did 80 other Democrats, far fewer than half of the Democratic caucus.
The measure, which pays for homeland security, national defense, food safety and education support, was supported by an overwhelming majority of Congressional Republicans and easily passed the Senate. The President signed the measure Thursday night.
Pelosi’s opposition signals deep concern within the liberal community that Mr. Obama has lost his way, and could auger poorly for the President as he gears up for the 2012 election.
The split within the House Democrats also shows a deeper rift between liberals and more moderate Democrats who tend to take a more pragmatic view of the legislative process.
Hoyer quoted Henry Clay, the former Speaker of the House in the 19th Century and former Presidential candidate, who famously said, “If you can’t compromise, you can’t govern.”
Hoyer has signaled that he intends to be the deal-cutter for House Democrats, largely confining Pelosi to a role as a cheerleader for the left. Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, Congress, Conservatives, Democrats, Government, Henry Clay, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Republican, Republicans, Steny Hoyer
Posted in Government, Politics, Theory | No Comments »
April 6th, 2011 by John Feehery
Yesterday, President Obama said that Congressional leaders should act like “grown-ups.”
Good advice. I wish he would follow it.
According to the dictionary definition, a grown-up is a “a fully developed person from maturity onward.” I assume that all the Congressional leaders are fully developed people, but the same probably doesn’t apply to all the pundits out there.
Wikihow, an on-line advice site, advises those looking for guidance on how to act like a grown-up to do the following: (1) Stay cool in situations, (2) Do not get into useless arguments with people, (3) Don’t insult people for disagreeing with you (4) Be polite under every circumstance, (5) Do not cry when you get yelled at, (6) Always think about how people would interpret your actions, statements, answers, etc. (7) Use appropriate language and tone when you’re engaging in a conversation.
This is very helpful advice, especially for those show-horses out there who claim that the world is going to end tomorrow.
The government might shut-down, but as long as we are all grown-ups about it, then we should be okay. Read more...
Tags: America, Barack Obama, budget cuts, Congress, Democrats, dollar, Economy, Government, government shut down, grow up, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Politics, Republican, Republicans, spending, taxes
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, GOP, Government, Politics, Promises, Theory, spending, taxes | No Comments »
April 1st, 2011 by John Feehery
It is easy to be fairly nonchalant about the current budget battle that has consumed the Congress.
Pundits (myself included) have pointed out that the tens of billions of dollars being discussed is chump change, especially if you consider the trillions of dollars that we owe to the Chinese.
And that may be true.
But that doesn’t mean that these cuts being considered by both the House and Senate are not significant. Because they are. And it doesn’t mean that they won’t be painful. Because for many folks, they will be.
In fact, should the House and the Senate cut $36 billion from the rest of this year’s budget, it will be the largest one year spending cut in our nation’s history. By far.
That is historically significant. Kind of like when Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open a few years ago by a dozen strokes (or whatever the final number was). It is a big deal.
And if you consider that this $36 billion dollar number applies for only slightly more than a half year of the budget, that spending cut is astounding. Read more...
Tags: Budget, budget cuts, Chinese, Congress, Democrats, House of Representatives, House Speaker John Boehner, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Pundits, Republicans, spending, Tea Party, tiger woods, U.S. Open
Posted in Economy, Government, Politics, Theory, spending | 1 Comment »
March 11th, 2011 by John Feehery
(Washington DC) House Democrats, concerned that their performance in the King Hearings may expose them to charges of being needlessly and dangerously politically correct, have decided to launch their own probe into the dangers of extremism that confront the American people.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused Peter King of “being too narrow-sighted and frankly too scared to take on the real extremists that bedevil the American people.”
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren chimed in: “Anybody can go after the Islamic terrorists. But everybody knows about them. What about all the other extremists out there?”
According to a confidential source, Democrats plan to do a series of hearings on dangers posed by extreme sports enthusiasts, extreme eaters, extreme pack-rats, and a variety of other “extreme” Americans.
“Extreme sports figures pose a particular threat because they infect our youth with their crazy skateboard antics”, this source said. “Who is this red-headed guy who now appears in credit card commercials. They call him Shawn White, but do we really know where he comes from? That red-hair is no lie. He must be a red of some sort.” Read more...
Tags: Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, Conservatives, Democrats, Economy, Government, Nancy Pelosi, Peter King, Politics, Republicans
Posted in GOP, Government, History, Liberal Media, Media, Politics, Theory | No Comments »
January 26th, 2011 by John Feehery
Like the audience that was arrayed in front of him, the President’s State of the Union address was all mixed up in ways that made it unconvincing and inauthentic.
Congress decided it was going to break down partisan barriers by having Republicans and Democrats sitting together. So, for example, Roscoe Bartlett, the conservative Republican from Maryland, sat with liberal Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Republican Senate campaign chairman John Cornyn sat with Democratic Senate campaign chairman Patty Murray etc.
Nobody really believes that Congress is going to play nice with one another once this speech is forgotten (and it was a forgettable speech), and frankly, nobody outside of Washington really cares. What they would like to see is Congress doing something that gets the government out of their lives, makes it less costly, and makes it more honest. But that probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon. And no matter where the Senators sit during the State of the Union, it doesn’t matter if jobs don’t come back.
The President hurried through the speech, as if he just wanted to get it over with. He made several technical errors and gaffes. Had he been a figure skater, Dick Button would have been horrified. Read more...
Tags: b, Barack Obama, Congress, Conservatives, Democrats, Economy, Government, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Politics, reform, Republican, Republicans, spending, Tea Party
Posted in Economy, GOP, Government, Politics, Theory, Unemployment, speeches, spending, taxes | No Comments »
January 7th, 2011 by John Feehery
On my first day of my vacation, I lost my phone.
I lost it somewhere on the plane as I was flying down to Atlanta. Still haven’t heard from Delta as to whether they found it.
When you are on vacation, not having access to a phone is a guilty pleasure. You don’t check it every thirty seconds because, well, you don’t have something to check. And pretty soon, you forgot that you ever needed one.
But eventually – at least in my world – I need a phone. I need to connect to clients, to family, to friends, to the world.
And not having a phone becomes a crisis.
I am currently in a crisis, because I still don’t have a phone.
This is no longer a guilty pleasure. Now I am just guilty of being disconnected.
One of the things about vacationing in Mexico is that they make it awfully difficult down there to stay connected. The internet rates are extraordinarily expensive (10 bucks an hour), and the service itself is uneven, which makes it even easier to say to yourself, hey, I am going to stay disconnected. Read more...
Tags: Fox News, Government, iphone, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Vacation
Posted in Government, Politics, Theory | No Comments »
December 8th, 2010 by John Feehery
I ran into an old friend of mine who works in the hedge fund industry and he told me that if Congress fails to pass the extension of the tax cuts, the stock market is going to drop like a rock.
“It’s going to be like what happened after the first TARP bailout vote failed. It is not going to be pretty.”
Both the left and the right are engaged in a familiar game of chicken.
The left can’t stomach the fact that they are losing this opportunity to sock it to the rich. Against all evidence, these so-called progressives think that regressing back to a class-warfare argument is not only good politics, but also a great blow for fairness.
On the right, some are saying that this is a bad deal because we aren’t paying for an extension of unemployment insurance. Their pleas for fiscal restraint would have more resonance if they also offered to come up with ways to pay for the tax cuts.
Perhaps the only one who has a consistent argument is George Voinovich, who doesn’t want unemployment extended, but doesn’t want the tax cuts extended either. He is of the firm belief that these tax cuts aren’t going to help the economy and that we should take this time to fundamentally reform the tax code. Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, Bush tax cuts, Congress, Conservatives, Democrats, Economy, GOP, Government, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Politics, Republicans, spending, stock market, TARP, taxes
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, GOP, Government, Laws, Politics, Theory, taxes | No Comments »
December 7th, 2010 by John Feehery
Obama Meets With Congressional Leaders. In This Photo: Barack Obama, Harry Reid, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images North America)
The deal the President cut with Mitch McConnell is a sign of things to come for soon to be ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Obama announced that he had a deal to extend the Bush tax cuts (or prevent tax increases, if you prefer) and at the same time, extend unemployment insurance to 99 weeks for slightly more than a year. There are also a variety of other cats and dogs included in the package, including a package of tax extenders that various industries desperately needed.
While the White House might spin it, this is a complete victory for McConnell. He knew that he wasn’t going to get a permanent extension of the tax cuts, and a two year extension was about as good as it was going to get for the GOP.
This takes U.I. off the table for a year, which gives House Republicans time to figure out how they are going to deal with this issue when it inevitably comes up. This insurance program is now threatening to become a pale version of welfare, and Republicans need to find a way to tweak the program to make certain that it is actually working to put people back to work. Read more...
Tags: Barack Obama, Bush tax cuts, Congress, Conservatives, Democrats, Economy, election, George W Bush, GOP, Government, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Politics, Republican, Republicans, spending, taxes
Posted in Economy, GOP, Government, Laws, Politics, Theory, election, spending, taxes | No Comments »
December 3rd, 2010 by John Feehery
More than two years ago, on November 9, 2008, I wrote:
“Nancy Pelosi, flush with the excitement of a new expanded majority and a new liberal post-partisan President, took two steps to may make her time as Speaker fairly short.. First, she kissed good-bye to Rahm Emanual, the fiery, combative and highly partisan Caucus leader…Second, she is backing the coup against John Dingell, led by Henry Waxman…As a republican strategist, I am delighted by this power play, because it could mean the beginning of a divided and weaker Democratic caucus…Dingell has been one of the most effective Chairman in the history of the House, so taking him out would be good for Republicans.. Sacking a Chairman because he incompetent is one thing. Sacking a Chairman because of a personal slight or because he disagrees with you on an issue is something completely different..Most members will support a Speaker who sacks an incapacitated or incompetent Chairman. But some members will grow very nervous when a Chairman is sacked for political reasons. They know that the bell may next toll for them.”
I thought of that column in the context of the current race for Energy and Commerce Chairman in the new Republican-led Congress. Read more...
Tags: Congress, Conservatives, Democrats, election, Energy and Commerce Chairman, Fred Upton, Government, Joe Barton, John Boehner, John Dingell, John Shimkus, Nancy Pelosi, Politics, Presidential election, Republican, Republicans
Posted in GOP, Government, Laws, Politics, Theory, election | No Comments »
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