Pelosi... the next House Minority Leader?

When Gingrich lost his position as Speaker of the House, he resigned his seat. Many assume that Foley (his predecessor) would have done the same, had he not been voted out of office entirely, after losing 54 seats to the GOP in 1994.

Pelosi watched as 60 seats changed hands in the House last Tuesday... all on her watch as Speaker, and she has shared the responsibility of seeing the approval of the 110th Congress fall to levels unheard of in the last 100 years of American history. Is she going to hang it up?

Nope. She's running for Minority Leader of the House.

Now, as I see it, this is going to put her right in the lime-light again, as the primary opposition to the GOP agenda. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?

If Obama wants to get ANYTHING done in the next two years... he's going to need to compromise with and find common ground among the new GOP members of Congress. Pelosi is NOT going to help him there. If, on the other hand, Obama wants to use that time to show that the GOP is going to do NOTHING but oppose every piece of legislation he supports (which it undoubtedly will) in hopes of gaining back some ground in 2012, then Pelosi can help him there.

Is it possible that Pelosi sees herself as the liberal, Democratic answer to Palin? Could she actually hold aspirations of running for higher office? The Governorship of California? The White House? Is that possible?

She actually sees her time as Speaker as a "success"... and that is more than amazing, it's frightening. Yes, they passed massive, sweeping reform legislation... but the manner in which they did it became so unpopular as to overshadow the legislation itself. No transparency, no outreach, no debate or discussion... all rushed through so as few eyes see the bills as possible and as few questions are asked as possible. For a Speaker of the House to have uttered the words: "You have to pass the bill to see what is inside it" is tantamount to legislative tyranny, if you ask me... and couldn't be more opposite to her actual job description if she wanted it to be.

Is there no one in the dark recesses of the DNC that can manage this beast called Pelosi? As a registered Democrat, I'm inclined to think that this woman is doing more, single-handedly, to bring the Democratic Party to a point of irrelevance within my lifetime than anyone else in history.