When the lefties don’t want to look like lefties, they turn to … Nancy Pelosi?
That’s the lesson from Foreign Policy magazine’s post mortem on the failed effort to rein in the National Security Agency’s spying on American citizens.
In a piece headlined “How Nancy Pelosi saved the NSA surveillance program,” the magazine credits the House minority leader – not generally considered anybody’s voice of sweet reason – with corralling enough of her fellow Democrats to defeat an amendment to the USA Patriot Act by Rep. Justin Amash, R-Ohio, that would have curtailed the NSA’s ability to collect information from private communications.
“Had Pelosi not been as forceful as she had been, it’s unlikely there would’ve been more Democrats for the amendment,” a source told Foreign Policy.
“Pelosi had a big effect on more middle-of-the road hawkish Democrats who didn’t want to be identified with a bunch of lefties” who are against national security, the source, described as a Capitol Hill aide, told the magazine.
With unusual modesty, Pelosi isn’t trying to hog the cameras to crow about her support for the NSA. She really doesn’t want her lib base to appreciate how much she plays politics with American security, depending on the mood of the moment, the size of the vote and, of course, the party of the president in the White House.
See, Pelosi voted for the Patriot Act back in 2001, when the country was still shaking from9/11. It would have taken a better man than she to stand up to the popular will.
She voted against its renewal in 2005 (the libs had scurried back to their anti-war principles by then and Bush was still in the White House). She voted against its renewal in 2011, when there was no chance it wouldn’t be renewed, so she could keep her Birkenstock bona fides without hurting national security.
But on Wednesday, when there was a close vote on the line and – more importantly – a Democratic president in the White House, Pelosi flipped back again.
Really, she was for the Patriot Act before she was against it; then she was against it before she was for it again.
Sounds like secretary of state material in a Hillary – God forbid – White House.
And the lefties cheer.
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