A hint on how Nancy Pelosi’s low public approval rating could help Republicans in 2010.
Few Americans know it, but one of the first votes newly-elected lawmakers cast in Washington is for Speaker of the House. And with rare exception, it’s a party-line exercise. So even Democratic congressmen who run as moderate-to-conservative back home all support a liberal Speaker from San Francisco as their initial act as lawmakers. And given the procedural power granted the Speaker under House rules, these same so-called “moderate-to-conservative” Democrats stack the deck in favor of many of the policies they ran against a few months earlier. It’s the legislative equivalent of giving a baseball team a 10-run lead before the game even starts. Voting for a liberal Speaker empowers a progressive agenda in Congress that is inconsistent with the positions of many Democrats who campaign as conservatives, and their constituents.
More at The Weekly Standard.