Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi has emerged from hiding, smile for the cameras, and stumbled. It happened yesterday when she endorsed Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, darling of the anti-war activists, over Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland for the post of House majority leader. “Your leadership gave so many Americans, including respected military leaders, the encouragement to voice their own disapproval at a failed policy,” she wrote in an endorsement letter to Murtha. Hoyer is vowing to battle it out. The Democratic Party should hope that he wins, because Hoyer, a relative moderate in the party caucus, has good relationships with the Blue Dog Democrats and many of the new moderate members who won election last week in swing or Republican-leaning districts.
Murtha?s full-throated call for withdrawal will prove unpopular with the voters in these areas, just as President Bush?s more-of-the-same policy did.
