Drinking the first cup of coffee in the morning is, for me, no more important than is reading that day's New York Times. It's a daily ritual, alternately enjoyable, informative and infuriating.
How infuriating? Over the years, the Times has written — make that preached — on the need for Republicans to become a more tolerant, "big tent " political party. How? By including voters and candidate with a "pro-choice" position on the thorny issue of abortion. But I search in vain to hear The New York Times tell Democrats they, too, can be a real "big tent" party by welcoming other Democrats who hold a "pro-life" position on abortion.
But the reality is that without elected pro-life House Democrats in their caucus, Democrats would be exactly what they were between 1995 and 2007: a frustrated and powerless minority. Even absent any editorial encouragement from the Times or the "liberal press," House Democrats began recruiting, electing and embracing pro-life candidates who could win in culturally conservative congressional districts. That is how you build both a coalition party and a House majority where Democratic members, while not agreeing on every issue, do mostly agree on most issues.
As the Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California was one of the principal architects and engineers of her party's taking and holding the House in the 2006 and 2008 elections. As the first woman speaker, she has done what none of her male predecessors, including legendary Sam Rayburn and "Tip" O'Neill, had ever been able to do: win House passage of a national health care reform bill.
Let us stipulate that Speaker Pelosi is not a beloved national figure. In the most recent Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, 26 percent of voters registered favorable feelings toward her, while 42 percent expressed negative feelings.
But within the halls of the Capitol, Pelosi has shown herself to be Master of the House.
A check of Pelosi's scheduler's records over the past 10 months reveals 35 full party caucuses and close to 180 meetings on health care. She has had one-on-one colleague sessions, and meetings with the Black Caucus, with the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats, with anxious rural members, with the Hispanic Caucus, angry at the bill's treatment of undocumented immigrants, with the liberal Progressive Caucus, with small business Democrats, and with the Pro-Choice Caucus, to name a few. "The Democratic Party," former Speaker Jim Wright noted, "is a mixture, an amalgam, a mosaic. Call it a fruitcake."
To win the votes of pro-life House Democrats needed to pass the health care bill, Pelosi agreed to a floor vote on an amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan to include the Hyde Amendment, which since 1976 has barred the use of federal funds to pay for abortions except when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or it threatens the life of the mother.
For permitting the vote on the Stupak amendment — which reflects the basic national consensus that abortion be legal and available and that tax dollars not be used to pay for it — the strongly pro-choice Pelosi faced the unbridled wrath of her sister pro-choice Democrats. According to eyewitnesses, Pelosi told the leaders of her Pro-Choice Caucus that what she and their party were working to pass was "not an abortion rights bill. It is a health care bill."
Pelosi's immediate predecessor as leader of House Democrats, Dick Gephardt, has privately confided his doubts that a male speaker like himself would have had the credibility to placate his angry pro-choice women members.
But like the anti-communist Richard Nixon opening U.S. relations with communist China, the pro-choice Nancy Pelosi could and did pull it off. Throughout she showed herself to be tireless, shrewd and tough. Anyone who underestimates this speaker does so at his peril.
To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
COPYRIGHT 2009 MARK SHIELDS
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Thank you Mark for pointing out what should be obvious, but sadly is not. If nothing else, the Dems should take a lesson on how not to do things from the Repubs, who clearly are falling prey to a newly mutated, more virulent strain of political correctness than the seasonal variety. "That leads to the dark side, Luke..." So nice it would be to make this a perfect world, but since none of us has a direct line to God and we are as miserably fallible as we are, we have to settle for taking basic, concrete steps forward and be happy if we can keep our noses pointed in the direction of progress.
Comment: #1
Posted by: Masako
Sat Nov 14, 2009 10:34 AM
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Sir;.... I am a Catholic and I accept that Abortion is a Sin, and I am an American who knows that the only object of our government, is to protect rights, and is not to attack rights under the guise of a false morality...Democracy is the united defense of rights...The worm of government has turned when we find that we are constantly having to defend our rights from our government -which clearly fears us, and snares us all with a web of legal silk... The fetus is like our canary in the coal mine, and as that child dies- as do so many children do after birth, in the school, in the streets, in their churches, in the workplace, and in prison, so do we die... If the rights of the child were actually supported after birth there would be no fear of abortions before..How can we support the infant's rights when we must defend our own???...That we are trading our future life for our lives today is a symptom of a deadly condition... We do not need another law attacking the rights of the individual, and the individual should ask how government can dare, IF the people are, as they say: Sovereign... Do we have only those rights that government will not deny??? Upon whose authority; IF not our own???... The parties preach that there is no right government cannot alienate... You accept parties, but I see parties ganging up on this group or that, and I see those people under attack having to elect their opposition party just to have their basic rights when they may have nothing else in common with the party... This yes or no relationship we have with our government does not work... There is no real communication with government...We are speaking in Morse Code, dashes and dots, rights and lefts, yes, or no to government... Each one against cancelles out a for, and our leaders consider only the difference... More and more, our parties have become the agents of our growing will, and more and more that will is at loggerheads, and stalemated by the other side... This country is not being directed by the reasoned application of our collective will...The vast numbers left and right are frustrated in their need for good government while the government seeks out our reflexes, so it can play rough on them... ... Unity is a stated goal of our constitution; but if we should ever need our unity to stand against some danger we will find our love and understanding exhausted along with our national spirit...If we reach a point of saying the new master cannot be worse than the old, we are through... There are many sides to every question... The answer is not republican or democrat, or party, or any combination attacking individual rights... We have pushed the threshold of women's rights into her womb... Will we see her ears attacked so she cannot hear her rights, or see her mind attacked so she cannot consider them??? Our government like all governments was established to do good, to defend our rights -as the bed rock upon which it was founded, and not to attack us in order to stamp out sin or evil...If our rights were protected by government instead of being constantly under attack, then we would have a nation where we would want to be born, which is how every mother needs to feel... And this is your problem: that you accept the government, and the form of government that has brought us to the point of feeding on our young, upon their needs, and upon their rights, and you enjoin them to continue on that same path... I will never accept a part of it... One of ours, Abalard, said: Jus is the Genus, and lex, meaning Law, was a species of it... Justice is the mother of law for lack of a better expression, and justice must come out of government for government to be legitimate... Our government is a crime...We must accept people as sovereign over their own bodies, with the rights they demand accepted for others, with not the least of these being an unbounded right to justice...Justice is not only an essential to every individual life, but is essential to the life of any community- as we expect our nation to one day be...Our law, and the government which forms it and enforces it must deliver justice to be legal...This constant strife and struggle with government to have our rights must end, and I wish, forever....Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #2
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Fri Nov 20, 2009 6:51 AM
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