Party Like It’s 2005

by digby

I don’t know how many of you say Nancy Pelosi on The Daily Show, but it was a bizarre performance, particularly this part:

Q: Is Congress, as it is made up today, obsolete? With a powerful president, is Congress sort of a vestigial — unless it has 60 votes in the Senate and a huge majority in the House?

A: Fair question … because the fact is the Republicans in Congress vote so much as a rubber stamp with the president that they are abdicating the role of Article I — we are the first article of the Constitution, the Congress of the United States — but if you say, “I’m just going to vote with the president, stick with the president every time,” then he has power he should not have.

Q: Will you exercise that type — let’s say Barack Obama is fortunate enough to win the presidency … are you saying that the Democrats will exercise more and more stringent oversight over a Democratic president than the Republican Congress did over President Bush?

A: Well, the same thing —

Q: You’ll rubber stamp?

A: No rubber stamp. And in terms of, say, for example, domestic surveillance, no president, Democrat or Republican should have the power that this president wanted to have. So it isn’t — and the Congress of the United States has to assert its prerogatives. And this Republican Congress has been a rubber stamp for so long, but that will change.

Huh?

First, am I mistaken or are the Democrats in charge of congress right now. The “Republican Congress” hasn’t been in charge since January 2007. And didn’t that Democratic congress just give the president what he wanted on domestic surveillance? What am I missing?

You can see the whole interview here. It’s quite incoherent, as if she is stuck in some time warp and talking about events that haven’t already happened.

And, by the way, one thing she says is undoubtedly true: the Democratic congress will give President Obama a much harder time than they ever gave Bush. No rubber stamps, that’s for sure. The only time Democrats ever put up a fight is against their own.

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