Squaring the Culture

I’ve now heard two commentators, Newt Gingrich being one of them, suggest the possibility that Nancy Pelosi’s unexpectedly partisan speech just before the House vote on the Paulson Bailout bill on Monday was in fact a deliberate attempt to get Republicans to vote against the bill in large enough numbers to make it fail. The suggestion goes that the Democrats were gaining political fodder by keeping the emergency alive, and could go back afterward to pass a partisan measure of their own without having to compromise with the Republicans, claiming that “We gave the Republicans what they wanted, and they voted it down.” Let’s not forget, the Democrats hold the majority, and can pass a bill without a single Republican if they vote by party line. I recall asking how it was possible that Nancy Pelosi could have been so completely ignorant of the votes in her own caucus; Gingrich gives the answer suggested by Occam’s Razor, “She wasn’t.”

If this is true, my initial assessment of the Congressional Democrats, which was this:

…now changes to this:

Can you believe the nation is facing so real a crisis and they’re busy playing politics with us all? Either it’s not a real crisis — in which case the bailout is a brazen attempt to fool us into swallowing socialism — or it is a real crisis, and these bastards deserve to be impeached. Or maybe I was right the first time, and they’re incompetent. Those are our choices.

My friend Jim wonders why I hate Democrats.

UPDATE: Add Rush Limbaugh to the list of those making this claim. He thinks the same. His supporting argument states that Pelosi had five committee chairmen who owe her favors vote against the motion, and she took no action to turn their votes. Likewise, Barney Frank had 12 committee members who voted against the measure, and he took no action to turn their votes. Limbaugh observes that they could easily have passed the measure if they’d wanted to, and concludes that they did not want to. Sounds persuasive to me.