The president has a useful foil, and Pelosi can now pursue her dream of getting Trump’s tax returns.
It was no accident or blunder that Donald Trump tweeted a congratulations to Nancy Pelosi and told Democrats that she should be the next speaker of the House. “She earned it,” the president declared.
And how beautifully does that work out for Trump? In Nancy Pelosi, liberals are about to hand to the GOP the gift that just keeps giving. Pelosi is in many polls the least popular politician in America — she’s less popular than even Donald Trump. If the Democrats were a semi-sane party and not handcuffed to the identity politics that prevents them from ever firing any woman or minority no matter how big a liability, Pelosi would be the last person on earth they would pick to be speaker. Smart Democrats with whom I talk know that this is the case, but they can only half-whisper this truth.
For this and other reasons, conservatives should stop grousing about Republicans losing the House.
The midterms were the equivalent of an NFL preseason game. All that matters for the future direction of the country and breaking the back (figuratively) of the far left is 2020 and getting Trump reelected. Given the results on Tuesday, his odds of reelection have gone up — fairly considerably.
I have been arguing for months that the next two years would be gridlocked on legislation no matter who ran the House. GOP control of the House in that environment would have been a political curse, not a blessing for Trump. The lack of legislative progress with a GOP majority in the House would only have deflated conservatives. More important, if anything were to go wrong with the roaring economy and Republicans held the House, they would be beaten mercilessly by voters in 2020. Who else would there be to blame?
Now, with House Republicans banished to the back benches, they can and I predict will start acting like real fiscal conservatives and vote against the giant spending bills that Pelosi will want to send their way. The GOP’s abandonment of the extremely effective Budget and Control Act spending caps enabled the Niagara Falls of spending over the last two years. This has shamefully added some $300 billion to the budget deficit. So many of the Republicans who marched into Congress riding the coattails of the anti-big-government tea-party revolt of 2010 seemed to have forgotten why voters sent them there. Is it any wonder that voters have sent many of them back home?
Meanwhile, Pelosi has already announced her first big new idea for Democrats. Drum roll, please. She wants to force Trump to release his tax returns. Now there’s an inspiring issue that will help make America great again. Next she wants to hamstring Trump with investigations, possibly initiate impeachment hearings, and unleash Maxine Waters of California as the incoming chairman of the powerful Financial Services Committee on the banking and investment industry. (Since Wall Street and many of the big banks showered Dems with money this cycle, it’s hard to feel sorry for them. What did they think were buying?)
Maybe Pelosi will try to declare America a sanctuary country and shut down the border patrol. And perhaps her green allies will help her shut down all fossil-fuel development in America — thereby turning off the lights and putting many millions of workers out of jobs. You go, girl.
In other words, Pelosi will give Americans a front-row seat into what “progressive” governance looks like up front and personal when the crazies are back running the show. It isn’t pretty, but it’s much better for voters to discover the madness of the modern Democratic party now than two years from now when the stakes will be so much larger. Trump finally has what he’s been missing since he vanquished Crooked Hillary two years ago: a foil.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Donald Trump is the biggest winner in last week’s midterm elections.