This article was written by a young college Republican in South Carolina.
Alright now, hear me out. As a human being and a Catholic, she’s legitimately an antichrist in the true sense of the word. But as a politician, she is a mastermind—in the best, worst way.
Let’s recount Nancy Pelosi’s record: she rallied her party around her as Speaker of the House in 2007, passed the Obamacare omnibus bill without reading it, became Speaker of the House for a second time in 2019, orchestrated two successful impeachments against President Trump with a historically small majority, and then wrestled that small majority full of big egos to pass nearly all of Biden’s priorities in the first two years of his administration, and overall being the leader of her party in the House for 20 years, all the while not giving Republicans one admission of mistake or shred of an apology along the way for the lies she routinely told.
To Republicans, this is a terrible career. But think about it from a Democrat perspective. Let’s be real about this: Nancy Pelosi was arguably the most effective political operator on the Democrat side for at least the past 35 years, besides maybe Barack Obama or the late Senator Harry Reid. Quite frankly she makes Senator Mitch McConnell look like the captain of the JV squad.
What made her so good as a political operator? In short, she’s a ruthless machiavellian with sky high political intellect and excellent timing. Let’s take a deeper look at the highlights from her first tenure as Speaker of the House.
Coming into 2009, Democrats had an incredible trifecta, holding control of the House and Senate, both with comfortable majorities and the latter with a filibuster-proof majority, and the Presidency. To set the stage for what was about to happen, we have to look back two years prior. She famously claimed that (as Speaker) she would pass all the Democrat’s priorities from the 2006 midterms in the first 100 hours of the new congress. In a time-bending blitz, she did it in just forty-two hours, made possible partly by the fact she silenced debate on the bills. Of the blitz and its reception by House Republicans, she remarked: “It was about keeping our promise, not about adhering to some process [of review].”
In 2009, she made a similarly machiavellian play, this time with Obamacare. After the tiniest of compromises allowing some restrictions on abortion through Obamacare—done only because she couldn’t strong-arm her pro-life colleagues—she rammed it through. She famously stated: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
From these two snapshots in time we see the political will and follow-through that she had, and the tactics she would use to strong-arm her colleagues. After a resounding victory taking back the House in 2006, she used her momentum and political capital in a blitz that satisfied the Democrat base and established herself as a serious leader. She also courted independents with her bold moves, which would redound to her benefit soon. Then, in 2009 when Democrats had a supermajority in the Senate, she acted to shepard Obamacare through the House and on to passage in the Senate. Obamacare was a shitty idea, and it stunk more over time, which is why she rammed it through so quickly after it was drafted. You have to give her credit, she rose to the political occasion to enact the party’s agenda because she believed in it, even knowing it would cost her seats and the majority two years later. That was the other lesson she learned early in her tenure: representatives come and go but laws can be forever, therefore it was better to sacrifice the former for the latter.
After four years as Speaker, Nancy Pelosi was relegated to the minority in 2011. She lay dormant, like a queen larva waiting patiently for life renewed. In the 2018 midterms, Democrats regained the House: Nancy Pelosi was reborn as Speaker for the second time.
In early 2019 there was renewed talk of impeachment, but she was smart enough to wait for a better excuse. After the Mueller and Durham reports, Russian Collusion wasn’t gonna cut it as the reason for impeachment. Then, after the Perfect Phone Call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Nancy Pelosi sensed her excuse had arrived. With characteristic efficiency and vigor, Nancy Pelosi impeached Trump in the House but he was later acquitted in the Senate. That wouldn’t be the end of impeachment during Nancy Pelosi’s second tenure as Speaker. Trump Impeachment 2 was a more heated endeavor but concluded the same as the first, in impeachment in the House and acquittal in the Senate.
Nancy Pelosi no doubt knew her efforts would die in the Senate but that was never the point. She was thinking past that current moment. Eleven months before the 2020 election, Nancy Pelosi impeached Trump for the first time. She had put in her jab at him. And in a clear effort to get good while the getting was good, she impeached him again to put him out of play for the 2024 presidential election. Her calculus was wise but wrong in retrospect. Nancy Pelosi knows and we should learn that politics is a game of grand strategy. Avoid the short-term political games and traps unless they serve a longer-term goal. And when you execute a plan, do it fast, and be in lock-step with your allies until you cross the finish line.
It should be noted that sandwiched between these two events was the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic which was, and I must stress this part, a partially political phenomenon that was used as the impetus for radical authoritarian policy. Early on, Nancy Pelosi was actually quite tame about the situation, as Republicans began to spread alarm about a then-unknown virus that emerged from Wuhan, China. In late February, countering the rhetoric from Republicans, she said: “You should come to Chinatown… we think it’s very safe to be in Chinatown.” Then in March, as we all remember since we weren’t born last Thursday, Nancy Pelosi turned on a dime and harnessed the fears of the anxiety-riddled Democrats by demagoguing her party’s policies and denigrating her political opponents as anti-Asian racists. It was an impressive switch. Nancy Pelosi knows and we should learn to be malleable with changing circumstances, expose the opponent, and never let a crisis go to waste.
A more recent chapter of the story of Nancy Pelosi takes us to the short time her tenure overlapped with Obama’s third-term in 2021-2022. In short, she harnessed the hysteria she and her party helped kick up among (notice the pattern) anxiety-ridden Democrats and, frankly, the most unhealthy among us. It was as easy as saying a few buzz words in the right order over and over again, then adding “but now the government is here to help” at the end. America has clearly forgotten Reagan’s wise words. In any case, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats—with a historically small majority mind you—rammed through their agenda with astroturfed bipartisan support at first, then when they couldn’t get useful idiots on the Republican side to sign on, they ripped off the mask and did it with reconciliation, expertly avoiding the filibuster. Just like that, in only two years, the Democrats passed essentially all of their agenda.
Nancy Pelosi knows and we should learn party solidarity in two senses. Party solidarity for your party, and conversely party solidarity against your political opponent. Nancy Pelosi was able to take a fractious caucus full of Blue Dog Democrats and red-state holdouts on one end, and then green new deal lunatics and Jew haters on the other end and bring them to heel. She sacrificed many of her pawns to win the match, and win she did.
The final chapter of Nancy Pelosi’s political Odyssey takes us to mid-2024. Following Biden’s unmitigated watergate-level disaster on the debate stage in Atlanta, Georgia, pressure mounted against him. But even though the temperature elevated, Joe Biden was a stubborn, vain man who wouldn’t willingly give up power. After a few weeks, the pressure cracked the one ally who would bring him down: Nancy Pelosi. She saw that Democrat megadonors were withholding money until the time he dropped out, and recent polling showed disaster in the presidential race.
The call had to be made. It’s unclear exactly how that conversation went between Pelosi and Biden, but the tardy, octegenarian, so-called ‘humble servant’ didn’t relent in his opposition to vacating the ticket. He was so adamant that he publicly reiterated his commitment to stay on the ticket multiple times, and sent out his surrogates to do the same. After all this, the ruthless operator Nancy Pelosi went out on national TV and said: “It’s up to Biden to decide if he’s going to run.” Democrats on all levels saw this as the signal of no-confidence that it was. Biden had decided, but Nancy Pelosi had decided she would await the right decision.
Taking in Nancy Pelosi’s legacy, we should reflect on our Republican party and its foolishness throughout the on-and-off hegemony of Democrat operators like Nancy Pelosi.
If Republicans think their vision for the country is so moral and good, then why do we break ranks to help pass Democrat’s legislative excrement time and time again, election after election? Stick with the program, Republicans. There are very few RINOs left in our party, everyone needs to realize we’re now hashing out legitimate policy disagreements amongst ourselves, and fending off Democrat jackals that will use us for their ends and discard us when convenient.
Learn from Nancy Pelosi. Be shrewd, have good political timing with your policy pushes, play with the political rules you are given and have a ruthless political pragmatism, keep your people in line, and sacrifice them when the higher goal can’t be achieved without sacrifice and can be achieved with it. Reward those who make sacrifices, and primary those who don’t without a damn good reason.
Mind you, this long string of advice is all couched in the assumption that we are believers in foundational American principles like ante-imperium individual and property rights, a strong national defense and sovereign borders, and a republican form of government. Let me be clear: we are no better than Nancy Pelosi if we use her tactics and adopt her worldview. But we can achieve similar success if we emulate one of the best Democrat political operators of our time, and synchronize it with a proper and just political vision.
Those who find emulation of Nancy Pelosi to be abhorrent should first examine the most meaningful Republican victories and observe that they were not achieved with mundane means alone. Political power used for just ends should not be done apologetically. If you don’t wield it with the mandate given to you by voters, you should save the political theatrics and resign a coward.
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