You can hear the music starting now. That menacing cadence. The numbing feeling that something could soon happen. A small move that you see in the corner of your eye that makes your blood run cold. And then it happens:
Nancy Pelosi could be Speaker of the House…
That’s apparently the gist of a GOP effort right now to try and rally the party’s faithful. And it’s worth noting that this kind of demonization isn’t limited to one party or all that new. Should we mention Newt Gingrich? The Hill:
Congressional Republicans have begun a media campaign to scare voters about the prospect that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) likely would become Speaker if Democrats retake the House in November.
The attacks have come from Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). Party strategists are also encouraging surrogates on K Street to suggest that a Pelosi-led Congress would try to impeach President Bush.
Boehner ripped Pelosi on Friday in a press release, asking, “When will Pelosi admit she was wrong on Medicare ‘Part D’?�
The NRCC bragged yesterday about a Newsweek poll showing that 51 percent of Americans had never heard of Pelosi. On three successive days last week, the NRCC derided her for criticizing GOP legislative ideas to attract suburban voters and ripped her view of the economy and Medicare’s prescription-drug benefit.
The poll suggests that the GOP could help fill in the blanks and define Pelosi for voters by Election Day. MORE:
The Republican National Committee attacked Pelosi after she appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press� on May 7, saying that “Nancy Pelosi’s vision for the future is one of higher taxes on working Americans, cut and run in Iraq and a little impeachment thrown in for good measure.�
And then there’s this truly classic political retort:
Jennifer Crider, Pelosi’s spokeswoman, retorted, “Why are Republicans threatened by a mother of five and grandmother of five? Because Leader Pelosi is effective. House Democrats are united, disciplined and working for a new direction for America — one that works for all Americans, not just the privileged few.�
ZING! In one fell swoop Pelosi’s spokesman managed to paint the highly capable California politician as a sweet, little old grandmother — and also stay enough on message to toss some well-directed verbal bombs at the GOP.
Still the operative question is: Can the GOP in 2004 make Pelosi as politically horrific to its partisans as the Democrats made Newt Gingrich to its partisans and as the GOP made Tom Daschle to its partisans?
Or, to put it another way, can she be “Hillaried”?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.