Nancy Pelosi may play the ultra-liberal lefty for her fans in Frisco, but she was schooled in the nitty gritty and down & dirty of politics played for keeps by her father, Tommy D'Alesandro, U.S. Representative, Mayor of Baltimore, and highly accomplished big city boss. Her brother, "Tommy the Younger," was also a Baltimore Mayor.
She came out in public and wrote a letter endorsing Representative John Murtha, but she will continue to be working with Representative Steny Hoyer, who was elected minority whip today.
In one stroke she paid off an old debt to her partner-in-pork and threw a bone to the leftist nutroots in the Democrat Party, without being saddled with the nearly senile Murtha in the incoming Congress. Murtha's ethical shortcomings will fade from the news, and the Pelosi-Hoyer team will continue to operate as it has over the past few years.
Since the Democrats in the caucus knew all along that she didn't really want Murtha, they know this is no defeat, and it won't impair her leadership at all. It's the whip who enforces party discipline, anyway.
Reliapundit adds - FWIW:
You have to know about mayor Tom "Big Tommy" D'Alesandro, who ran the city with all the care and attention that Vito Corleoni gave his olive oil business. I mean...I won't say that Big Tommy was mobbed up or anything, but he when I say he ran the city, I mean he "ran the city." So much so that when his son, Tommy III, was arrested for rape, Big Tommy not only got the investigation shut down, but later helped the kid get elected to replace him as mayor.
I think you are very likely right, but you cite no evidence at all. That's an awful lot to assert with no evidence.
ReplyDeleteI am just making a judgment call. My only evidence is what's right before all of our eyes and ears. She used to keep the book on favors granted & favors owed for her father. There's not a snowball's chance in Hades that she didn't know how the votes were breaking against Jack Murtha. That's just the way I see it.
ReplyDeletei think she miscalculated: she felt that steny would stand aside as soon as she made her pronouncement.
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