Calmes: Nancy Pelosi, the GOAT?
January 3, 2013
When you are tired of waiting for a new Congress so that you can replace a failed leader, what would it take to remove Nancy Pelosi from one of the three seats she now holds on the House Floor?
If I were a Republican, I would have to imagine I would lose.
This is a woman who has held this position for more than twenty years, first as minority Leader in the House, then as Speaker of the House, then as Chair of the House Democratic Caucus. She has helped raise money for the Democratic Party, established a “caucus” of House Democrats, and she has worked with such Democratic stalwarts as Senator John F. Kerry and Senator Robert C. Byrd.
And here I am, not so sure I have seen the last of her.
In the spring of 2007, Nancy Pelosi was appointed as the new Speaker of the House by the Democrats in the House of Representatives. In the following weeks, a group of Republicans, led by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, successfully challenged Pelosi’s authority and the passage of a bill she considered insufficient, and demanded she be fired as Speaker. On the eve of the vote on the motion to remove her from the Speaker’s chair, a group of more than fifty Republicans walked into the Speaker’s office and, without informing her, took her phone away. As the clock ticked down on the motion to remove her from the Speaker’s chair, a visibly distraught Pelosi left the room.
And you know what happened next?
After twenty years of being the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi was voted out, without having a vote, without being heard, and without knowing what was happening in the House of Representatives.
It is a measure of the quality of America’s democracy and the commitment to civil discourse that even in such a dramatic event as Speaker Pelosi’s removal, the Republicans walked out of the majority with barely a whimper.
A day after Speaker Pelosi had been voted out of her post, a delegation of forty-nine Republicans walked into the House of Representatives and voted her out, as well.
This may not be the last we hear of Nancy Pelosi. In the past, however, she has been quoted as saying:
“I think (Republicans) can do it better than I can do it.”
And again, in 2010
