Guest Post by Michael J.W. Stickings
Yes, it’s Hoyer. And it wasn’t close. 149 to 86.
Questions:
— Are you okay with this? (I am.)
— What does it say about Pelosi? Has it weakened her?
— Will the Dems be able to move on peacefully? Will there be any negative fallout?
Otherwise, let’s move on, shall we?
Hoyer will be okay with me until the prosecutors cart him off to jail. I don’t think this weakened Pelosi. Hoyer acknowledged Pelosi’s friendship with Murtha when she wrote the letter on his behalf. I doubt any of this was shocking to the House Members. Business as usual.
I never shared the lock-step mentality of the Republicans. We don’t belong to an organized political party. We’re Democrats. We don’t have to preach diversity, we do it.
Good comment, Dale. It’s kinda like herding cats, ain’t it!
Interesting to see how ethics and party loyalty issues ended up biting Murtha in the ass. Neither man would have been my first choice, but this is “inside baseball” stuff that I doubt has an enormous bearing on the 100-day agenda.
As for the new speaker, she gets a unanimous win and her “choice” gets his head handed to him? Maybe he really wasn’t her choice after all. But here is a hall of mirrors I refuse to run down…
The question for me is how Pelosi is perceived after this. Perception is 90% of politics (it’s why I truly hate GWB, for having exposed the limits of American strength to our adversaries – you just don’t do that).
Republicans (and likely the media) are going to take this as a sign of her weakness that she claims to want to be a strong Speaker, and couldn’t keep her people in line. In the history of strong Speakers, this event does not bode well, because all of the strong Speakers were able to impose their will – go look at the history. But given Thomas Reed could rise from a similar hole to impose the modern rules, it will be up to Pelosi to demonstrate in the doing that she is in the same mold.
This is going to be particularly important given she is a woman, because she is not going to have the benefit of the doubt from either adversaries or supporters. I don’t like that it’s that way, but any woman in a powerful position and being the first there will tell you it’s true.
Time will tell whether she was harmed and how badly, and it will demonstrate what kind of leader she is in how she deals with it.
So far as I am concerned, it proves that the Piggies are still there in D.C., and that they’ll be happy to remain half-victorious as long as they can have the table scraps of their “victory.”
I’d really have preferred Murtha; his presence would have widened the parameters that define the Party. Hoyer now brings the spectre of K Street into a Democratic majority, just as DeLay brought it into the ReThug camp. “Deja Vue….”
It suggests a wedge between Pelosi and Hoyer—a trusted lieutenant who was set aside for another—that will be pounded at relentlessly by the other side of the aisle.
Dems just turned away from a decorated vet who stuck his neck out for the troops, when everyone else was playing the “Stay-The-Course” game—and sided with a member of the “same-ol’-same-ol’ network.” That might have cost them. It will depend on whether a “reality-based” House Ethics Committee will undertake Hoyer’s K Street connections—or just sweep ’em under the rug….
Of the two candidates, I was for Hoyer (or, more accurately, against Murtha). Frankly, I wish they’d taken more time and come up with better candidates to begin with.
I’m OK – Pelosi is not weakened – no fallout.
Now let’s move on to the one guy who can help us put all of this behind us – John Bolton – and let’s develop a fact sheet on his tenure at the U.N. and why he is an unbelievable failure.
I’m ambivalent toward the whole Hoyer/Murtha race. The whole thing borders on trivial.
How this affects Pelosi depends upon her response to it. If she spends the next two weeks defending her choice of John Murtha to the press, then, yes, she’s weakened. If she’s conciliatory and moves to change the subject to her agenda, she’s in decent shape.
And, Dems being Dems there will always be some interparty sniping and fallout. If they spent half the energy attacking Republicans as they do tearing each other apart, they’d have had control of the Senate and House oh … about four years ago.
I’m in the “no harm, no foul, let’s move along, nothing to see here” camp. This is the inevitable dust-up to be expected after a long time of being powerless and people are just starting to get used to it.
Neither Murtha nor Hoyer were perfect candidates, but what the heck. We’re just getting started here, let’s get the ball rolling on all the good stuff to come.
I think on some level Democratic lawmakers realized that Rep. Murtha is more of a flash in the pan on the Iraq debacle, and that Hoyer was the journeyman deserving of what he has so long been working toward. I sense the rivalry is over, and Dems will now move forward. I have nothing but utmost respect for Rep. Murtha for weathering the anti-democratic Bush Cult noise machine when he had the courage to begin questioning our policies in Iraq. He was the first in power to dare suggest we have a huge elephant in the room, and it is causing the needless deaths of so many people. -Kevo
Whether there is any long term fallout depends on how good a deputy Hoyer is. I liked neither candidate, but all things equal I was supportive of Pelosi’s desire as leader to have her cheif deputy be an ally rather than a former rival. I think things would run more smoothly that way and allow us to get more done, more efficiently. So long as Hoyer is willing to unselfishly be her deputy and not refight his old battles with her or try and politic around her for his own gain, all will be well. Of course, that is a pretty large “if”. . .
I expect self-inflating gasbags like Chris Matthews and ethically challenged Republicans to make more of this than anyone else. Pelosi endorsed her choice and someone else was chosen. It’s called “democracy”. The Republitards should try it sometime. This is nothing more than fodder for lazy MSM types.
I don’t think we have enough info here.
It weakens Pelosi if she was really behind the scenes working to get Murtha the job. But if she gave him her endorsement as a reward to him, then she did her part and the rest was up to him, and it doesn’t reflect on her if he didn’t win.
(Alternatively, her endorsement may reflect problems between Pelosi and Hayer, who have competed against each other for jobs before, as I understand it. If they don’t work well together, that’s not a good thing.)
Of course, if the new Democratic majority perceive it as weakening her, regardless of her strategy, then of course, it does. It could make it tougher for her to regain “control,” assuming that’s something she has a talent for. But I know I’ve been far more pleased with her and Reid than with their predecessors, and am very hopeful.
On paper, I prefer Hayer as more moderate, less inclined to deliberately make trouble for parts of the Democratic agenda, and probably less inclined to put his foot in his mouth. Though Pelosi might have better controlled these things in Murtha if he was coopted into the congressional administration. Or not.
We’ll just have to wait and see. Remember when most of us could find ways to like Lieberman back in 2000?
Yawn: Like can you imagine in the 08 election cycle anybody giving a crap about this!
“Yawn: Like can you imagine in the 08 election cycle anybody giving a crap about this!” – ron caldwell
Ah, that’s the ticket. Al Gore, go on Hardball and tease a run for the Presidency. That will bury this stupid “story” right where it belongs, with O.J.’s non-confession confession.
Then again, now that Murtha has lost, clearly the majority of the Democratic Caucus is for real Ethics Reform. With that settled let’s do it.
Pelosi neutralized Murtha. He can’t claim “insiders” did him in because Pelosi held him up as her choice. He got his head handed to him and he can go back to the blow-hard bench where he belongs. There is not one reason to approve of this guy except for his stance on Iraq.
I really see this as an insignificant issue. Pelosi is only one vote. Is it a big “loss” for the other 73 who voted for Murtha? She stated publicly who she was for. I think everyone expected her to do that rather than remain quiet. If you look closely, you can see the Media playing this up for news.
This is “beltway” BS to create perceptions.
Excellent move on Pelosi’s part. The House just moved towards the voters: raise minimum wage, universal health care, good college loans, and roll back tax cuts for fat cats and big oil. Murtha will still bust Bush’s chops on Iraq.
This is good for America.
It’s a good thing most talking heads aren’t actually in politics – they’d get their ass handed to them on a plate and like it.
It shows the Democrats MEANT it when then ran against a ‘rubber-stamp’ congress and against those who were ‘ethically challenged.’ And remember the Republicans who were so ‘scared’ of Speaker Pelosi imposing the ‘awful’ San Francisco agenda on the country.
I think this was a “good loss” for the Democrats.
Now, if we only can keep Hastings away from the Chairmanship…
I thought electing Murtha would help dispell the view in the South and swing states that the Dems are soft on terror. Hoyer is fine as long as he isn’t jockeying for the number 1 spot, undermining Pelosi.
But something which is bothering me: why is Pelosi replacing women in key posts with men? Women are good enough in the minority but not in the majority?
I’m with you, Toast, I wish they’d come up with better choices. But Murtha was not, IMHO, the man for the job. The only reason he got so much acclaim for his Iraq stance is because he was considered to be a hawk before. The assertion that he was the first to stand up and say no is ridiculous, he was a Johnny Come Lately who got more recognition because of his military influence. I’m glad he did it, and I applaud him for it, but that doesn’t mean a guy so far out of the Dem mainstream on so many issues should be majority leader. Big tents are fine, but Republican lite is not fine.
Murtha showed too much of his true stripes when he denigrated the ethics package, too. After reading the article in the WAPO about that, I’m really glad he lost. Not too encouraging to read about the strongarm tactics behind the scenes, that sounds really discouraging.
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