Today the press is gushing over Nancy Pelosi. After all, she has "survived" her first 100 days as speaker. [Was there a contract out on her? Snipers lying in wait?].
The LA Times praises her "forceful style that defies expectations", proclaiming, "She has embraced a centrist agenda and built relationships with rivals." ["Centrist"? I guess anyone in the center of the left wing appears "centrist" to the American media.]
Indeed, you have to hand it to Pelosi. After taking the Senate, Democrats were fractured and Pelosi's power base was poised to splinter out from under her. She pulled them together and while this hasn't exactly been an overly-effective 100 days [what happened to the "100 hours" that Pelosi and company were going to use to change the country? Hmmm . . . whimper and not a bang, I think], it is arguably at least as effective as the Republican effort was under Frist's lead.
But of all the issues that Pelosi has faced — minimum wage, Medicare, taxes — the coming battle of attaching strings to funding the Iraq war will be the big one. Pelosi has got to keep her party together in order to maintain her popularity, and her power.
But cracks are beginning to show.
This, in spite the Pentagon announcing the extension of Iraq tours to 15 months, adding three months of wartime duty to a tour that already took our young men and women away from their families for an entire year.
The Pentagon announcement came as a surprise to Bush, so once again a government agency undermines the administration's agenda, this time with really bad timing. [Would Rummy have allowed that to happen? I don't think so.]
Now that it's been made, the announcement gives Democrats something to rally around, something to wave in Bush's face when they meet to discuss the war budget next Wednesday.
Yet the GOP is "eyeing success" on the war funding vote.
And that will be very bad for Nancy Pelosi. Very bad indeed.