House loss could propel Pelosi into retirementWASHINGTON — The speaker's lobby and its hallways just off the House chamber are hung with portraits of all 51 former speakers: each male, each long gone, some famous, most forgotten: Henry Clay and Joseph Cannon, Tom Foley and Jim Wright, Newt Gingrich and Dennis Hastert.
Hanging over Tuesday's election is a big question: Will the first woman, San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi, join that gallery?
Pelosi's allies, perhaps offering a clue to her thinking, cite the example of legendary Texas Democrat Sam Rayburn, who twice lost the majority but came back as speaker a record three times from 1940 until his death in 1961.
If this is the path Pelosi, 70, wants to follow — seeking election as minority leader if Democrats lose the House — it would be a radical break with recent tradition, when Gingrich and Hastert resigned from Congress in the weeks after their party's loss of the House majority.
Many analysts believe Pelosi's political career could end Tuesday. Her national popularity is in the basement. She has become a symbol of Democratic excesses, much like Gingrich once was for Republicans, a radioactive "San Francisco liberal" from whom moderate Democrats in marginal districts are fleeing."Chances are that she would not stay in the House; she would resign," said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. A special election would be called in San Francisco, and Democrats would clear the way for a "new generation that's stepping up and has the energy and focus to be in the minority," he said.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2013312705_pelosi01.html****
Please go away, please go away, please go away,...
Even the Seattle times is facing some reality, that the draining of the "swamp" can start with her, and fellow cronies. Starting Tues.
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