Repukes plan to attack Speaker Pelosi by attaching her to Hillary Clinton

**Grimmlok** · November 19th, 2006, 04:39 PM

Republican strategists plotting their party's comeback after it lost control of Congress have identified the "first lady" of Democrat politics as a key target in the 2008 White House campaign — even though she will not be running.

Senior party operatives told The Sunday Telegraph that they are already co-ordinating plans to attack Nancy Pelosi, the liberal Californian congresswoman and Speaker-in-waiting who suffered a damaging rebuff from her own party caucus last week.

The Republican strategy is not only to undermine Mrs Pelosi's control of the House but also to associate her in voters' minds with Senator Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination.

"Two years of Pelosi gives a good idea of what four years of Hillary will be like," said Tom DeLay, the Republican powerbroker who ran his party in the House before he was caught up in a lobbyist corruption scandal. "They are both committed liberals and we will make that clear to the American people."

advertisementMrs Clinton, 59, has yet to declare herself as a presidential candidate but has accumulated a vast war chest of campaign donations that would make her hard to stop if she decides to run for the Democratic nomination. Republican strategists are determined to prepare for the possibility well in advance.

Mrs Pelosi's opening-week blunders will make the Republican tactics easier to execute. Her ally John Murtha, a Vietnam veteran who is leading calls for an immediate US troop pull-out from Iraq, lost heavily in a party ballot for the position of majority leader, one rung down from speaker, despite Mrs Pelosi's heavy lobbying for him. That embarrassment presages the trouble she will have holding together the Democratic majority, whose members range from left-wingers from inner-city districts to centrist congressmen from suburban areas in the Midwest and West.

Mrs Pelosi, 66, who is married to a multi-millionaire property investor, will become the most powerful woman in American political history when the new House sits for the first time in January.

As speaker, she ranks second-in-line to the presidency after Dick Cheney, the vice-president. Her solidly liberal voting record during her 19 years as a San Francisco congresswoman have made her a long-time target for Republican strategists' attacks.

They now plan to focus on the difficulty she is likely to have in running the House, splits within Democrat ranks on Iraq and her boast that she we will oversee "the most ethical Congress ever" in the wake of Republican corruption scandals. "Pelosi has set the bar extraordinarily high for the conduct of her caucus, herself and even Hillary," said a former Republican House strategist.

Tony Coehlo, a former Democrat whip in the House who ran Vice President Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, acknowledged his party concerns. "Even seasoned Democrats are concerned about the Republicans' ability to tar the polished Hillary by attacking Mrs Pelosi," he told The Sunday Telegraph.

"If Nancy does poorly, that hurts Hillary. That's really unfair, but that's what everyone thinks. That's reality. To help Hillary, Nancy has to be perceived as an effective leader and she's had a terrible start. It was just an awful first week."

A senior Republican operative who planned the damaging advertisements against Sen John Kerry, the Democrats' presidential candidate in 2004, predicted that it would not be easy to turn Mrs Pelosi into a surrogate target for Mrs Clinton.

"If Hillary has been able to separate herself from criticisms of her own husband, she'll try to do the same with Pelosi," he said. "She and her people are very smart and they will try to highlight the difference between the two women. You will see Hillary move more to the centre."

But a former strategist for a Republican House leader said: "If Pelosi comes across as not ready for prime time, that's going to hamstring Hillary. Fair or not, people can't help but make that comparison… Even Hillary's people are recognising that their fates are linked."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...1/19/wus19.xml

I love living in a country where 'liberal' is something to celebrate, and 'conservative' is something to be eyerolled at.

Also, Democratic liberalism is fucking ridiculous.. it's barely 'liberal' at all. Democrats aren't even as liberal as our neocons up in Canada. Sad.