Here Lies Nancy Pelosi; Will Journalists Notice

Nancy Pelosi is lying. OK, maybe that’s not a revelation. As a politician, the mere fact that she continues to breathe means she’s lying at least some of the time. You can tell politicians are lying in the United States when they have a letter after their name such as “D,” “R” or “I.”

But Feb. 28 brought out a falsehood that would impress even tall tale-telling fishermen. House Speaker Nancy Graceless had the audacity to tell ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas that she has common ground with the tea party movement.

This from the very same politician who only recently bashed tea partiers for “carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.” Then she claimed the tea parties were “Astroturf” or phony grassroots. Now she’s trying to talk herself out of that one by claiming what they do “in some respects it is” Astroturf.

Her new tune is to blame it on those evil Republicans, claiming “the Republican Party directs a lot of what the Tea Party does, but not everybody in the Tea Party takes direction from the Republican Party.”

“But, you know, we share some of the views of the Tea Partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, D.C., as – it just has to stop,” Pelosi lied. Yes, lied. When politicians lie and there’s a “D” after their names, the news media are as silent as former Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards was about his affairs and love child.

The same is true here. After the initial ABC interview, the network news media have ignored this entirely bogus claim. And Pelosi gets to continue to be interviewed like nothing happened. Heck, that whopper was so big it’s amazing Burger King didn’t get an endorsement deal.

Scarily though, she wasn’t done. Pelosi then rambled on saying “special interests” bother both her and “many tea partiers.” Where’s Joe Wilson when you need him?

We don’t need Joe to say it ain’t so. We have Opensecrets.org to comment on Pelosi’s career fund-raising. Since 1989, she has brought in more than $11 million to run her campaigns. That’s roughly a dollar per minute … for 21 years.

Of course, Nancy “I Oppose Special Interests” Pelosi never took a dime from such entities. Actually, I doubt she did take a dime. Her support’s not that inexpensive. Dollars yes. And it’s all the big donors liberals love – lawyers ($778,225), health professionals who might have an agenda on health care reform ($597,500), Wall Street ($589,450). Then there are the unions. Fifteen of her top 20 contributors are union groups. That 15 alone add up to almost $1 million. Overall, labor’s got $2 million in hooks into her – everybody from the AFL-CIO to the Teamsters.

But she’s still a friend to the common man, to the tea party movement.

Unfortunately, they’re not feeling the love. At the recent CPAC, a meeting of traditional conservatives and tea party attendees, someone created a Nancy Pelosi piñata. Not exactly how you treat your friends – even in Washington.

In the Feb. 7 New York Times, an article on a tea party meeting made it clear the attendees were fighting against Pelosi. After hearing how one group was going to battle the campaign of Sen. Harry Reid, an attendee said “you need to come to California and help us defeat Nancy Pelosi.” Another guest at that event was incensed by Pelosi’s previous Nazi comments. One tea party protester explained why that was so unacceptable.  “My grandfather's family, as Polish Jews, escaped Nazism. To call us Nazis is an abomination.” He shouldn’t be so sensitive. Friends always call each other Nazis. It’s like a pet name.

A Nov. 6 Washington Post article showed a similar anti-Pelosi sentiment from the tea party. According to the paper, “an estimated 10,000 conservative activists descended on Capitol Hill” “to defeat a bill they demonized as "Pelosi-Care.” “Stop Pelosi's madness!” they chanted.

And back in August, Pelosi, along with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., penned a column bashing the “ugly campaign” against health care in town hall meetings across the United States. Those meetings weren’t “civil” enough for Pelosi who seems intent on forcing national health care on an unreceptive public. Doing that is OK. Just don’t dare complain about it.

Ordinary voters know Pelosi isn’t one of them. To see her lie to pretend she was shows the desperation taking hold on the left. Whether liberals are attacking the tea parties, trying to assimilate them or battling them with the new “coffee party” movement, they are scared. The left has never truly liked the idea of grassroots politics, especially when those roots reach deep into conservative views.

Dan Gainor is The Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business [1]and Culture [2]. His column appears each week on The Fox Forum and he can be seen on Foxnews.com’s “Strategy Room.” He can also be contacted on FaceBook and Twitter as dangainor.

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