The real "crazy" talk

For the last year or so, there has been a constant drumbeat that the Tea Party is "crazy" and "extremist" and "dangerous". One of the biggest beaters of that drum has been Washington Post columnist and uber-Lib Eugene Robinson.

His latest column has no shortage of delusional and "crazy" talk itself. And interestingly, it's not because it's the usual boilerplate Tea Party bashing or 'Republicans are racist' stuff, it's crazy because he tries to defend the indefensible.

That's right. It's a love letter to Nancy Pelosi.

Let's parse some of the nonsense:

Losing elections is an occupational hazard for politicians, so there's no need to get all weepy about the Democratic officeholders who suddenly find themselves with more time to spend with their families. It would be more appropriate to shed a tear or two for the future of the country, what with the Tea Party brigade coming to town.

It didn't take long to get the jab in against the Tea Party. And he may claim there's no need to get weepy, but I'm willing to bet after last Tuesday Eugene did in fact get a little weepy.

President Obama still has the ability to set the nation's agenda - and also the power of the veto, in case of emergency. Harry Reid is still Senate majority leader - and after the way he punched and scrapped his way to victory, who wants to mess with him? As for John Boehner, he'll soon learn that his new job requires a more extensive vocabulary than "no."

I'm sure John Boehner's vocabulary comes from the same dictionary the Democratic party used from the years 2000 to 2008. Wouldn't you agree, Eugene?

This is the absurd double standard in American politics. When Republicans lose, they are supposed to concede, relax their principles, and rubber-stamp whatever the Democrats want to do. When the Democrats lose power, well, dissent becomes "patriotic" and they speak "truth to power" and their own crazy rhetoric gets overlooked by the Eugene Robinsons of the world.

But amid the wreckage of Tuesday's GOP rampage, there's one person for whom I feel awful: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She's losing her job not because she does it poorly but because she does it so well.

This is wrong on so many levels. But let's continue.

Pelosi would never ask for, or even accept, my sympathy - that's not her style. Her place in history was secure the moment she became the first woman to take possession of the speaker's gavel. Still, she squeezed every drop out of her four-year tenure. To string together a couple of sports cliches, she came to play and she left it all on the field.

As usual, the "historic" gender/race component of anything is the most important thing to a Liberal. Not the substance. Not what someone does. Not what they believe. She was the first female speaker. That's it. That's all that matters. Unless the "she" is a conservative.

I regret that the nation has never come to know the actual Nancy Pelosi. Most Americans are probably familiar only with the caricature that her political opponents sketched - the effete "San Francisco liberal" who knew nothing of America outside her mink-lined cocoon, where the taps ran with chablis and nourishment consisted of unpronounceable French cheeses, served on silver platters by waiters who were certainly gay, and quite possibly married.

Sounds about right.

That's not the Nancy Pelosi known to anyone who has ever met her. While the term "San Francisco liberal" is accurate, it's also true that she grew up - and learned the rough-and-tumble of politics - in gritty Baltimore. Her father, Tommy D'Alesandro, was a legendary "Charm City" mayor and political boss. Her education in how to count votes, and keep them counted, began at a young age.

Well, then, color me impressed. She was involved in politics from an early age? Her father was a big-time "political boss" in Baltimore? She was essentially born with a Democratic leader's congressional pen stuck in her power suit?

Only the most ardent water-carriers and out of touch beltwayers would make these points and think they are actually defending someone.

Mr. Robinson, this is exactly the problem that people have with the government in our country right now. This is one of the reasons you are seeing the rise of the Tea Party that you denounce as racist and crazy and extreme.

People are sick and tired of career politicians, born into this "show business for the ugly", entitled to rule instead of blessed to represent. People who have never run a business or met a payroll or waited tables or dug a ditch or lifted a finger to do anything other than carry a community organizer's clipboard – yet demand and command from their Washington perches more money, more liberty, more attention than us flyover rubes would ever really prefer to give them.

Kapish?

He goes on...

When she appears before the cameras, Pelosi often seems stiff and almost brittle. In person, she's warm and engaging - also funny, earthy and just plain good company. She tells a great story. She turns a mean phrase. Colleagues on Capitol Hill almost universally describe her as a good boss and simply a good person.

It was frustrating to hear Republicans demonize her in their thunderous public statements, then confess privately that they really liked her. Ain't politics grand?

And demonize her they did. In their midterm campaign, Republicans attacked Pelosi more often, and more brutally, than they attacked Obama. They made her the living embodiment of Evil Washington, or of limousine socialism, or of whatever alleged plagues that Democrats were supposedly visiting upon the body politic.

Sounds familiar. Wasn't Bush sometimes stiff in front of the camera? I wonder, was Eugene Robinson frustrated by the Democrats "demonizing" Bush "in their thunderous public statements" as well?

Some of the votes she won looked impossible. On health-care reform, there appeared to be no way the House could ever be persuaded to pass the more conservative bill that had passed the Senate. At one point, she told me she could find only "maybe a dozen votes" for the measure. But she and Reid managed to find a workable set of modifications - and a clever parliamentary maneuver to pull the whole thing off.

I was at the Capitol that day when the House passed the landmark health-care bill. Tea Party groups were protesting outside, egged on by Republican members of Congress who came out onto a balcony and led the catcalls.

Pelosi did what was right for the country, and what's right isn't always what's popular. Democrats may decide they need a less polarizing figure as minority leader; if they do, well, that's politics. But I'd love to see her stay in the Democratic leadership - and I'm betting that eventually she'd find a way to take back the gavel that she pounds with such righteous authority.

Again, this is how you defend something? A "clever parliamentary maneuver to pull the whole thing off"? And this is supposed to make us feel all warm and fuzzy about Nancy Pelosi and Obamacare?

As far as doing what's "right for the country", well, I would argue that there are differing opinions on that.

We know that, to progressives, getting the foot in the health care door and then driving out private insurance so we can get to a full-commie single payer system seems like what's "right for the country". They've been telling us so for years, by the way.

But a majority of Americans do not agree with you, Eugene. A majority of Americans reject your ideas about the role of government in our everyday life. A majority of Americans, coincidentally, disagree with President Obama's ideas about that as well.

A majority of Americans made that very clear on November 2, 2010. If you still don't get that, Eugene, well, just wait until 2012. The message will likely be even louder and clearer.