But it is really all the fault of the Republicans for not rolling over and playing dead, you see.

The problem for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn't just President Bush. It's the Senate.

Pelosi sounded more apologetic than celebratory Friday when she announced with her Senate counterpart, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democrats' list of accomplishments six months after they seized control of Capitol Hill and promised "a new direction" in Washington.

"I'm not happy with Congress, either," Pelosi, of San Francisco, conceded.

She pinned the blame on "the obstructionism of the Republicans in the United States Senate."

Immigration has joined Iraq, stem cell research, Medicare drug pricing, the 9/11 Commission's recommendations and other promises in the dustbin of the current Congress. Heading into a July Fourth recess after a bruising failure on immigration, Congress has a public approval rating in the mid-20s, lower than Bush's and no better than Republicans' ratings on the eve of their catastrophic election defeat in November, when the GOP lost control of the Senate and the House.

Seems rather hypocritical to me -- after all, this is the woman who promised "bi-partisanship" but has never tried to deliver on that -- and is faulting the GOP for daring to use some tactics that ought to be familiar to both her and the mobbed-up Senate Majority Leader who was standing beside her as she delivered her comments.

"The Republicans are doing what the Democrats did," said Julian Zelizer, a history and public affairs scholar at Boston University. "They're using the power of the Senate filibuster, and the power in the House when you have narrow majorities, to make a do-nothing Congress -- even when there's a lot of issues on the table, even when there's a lot of interest in accomplishing things."

In other words, she is angry that the GOP would dare use the powers that the Democrats insisted upon as a matter of right when they were in the minority. I believe that the proper response is "Payback's a bitch -- and so are you, Nancy."

Posted by: Greg at 04:56 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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