House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Absolut) ventured deep into enemy territory on Tuesday, traveling to Ron DeSantis country to speak at the Aspen Ideas Climate Conference in Miami. While there, she sounded an uncharacteristically generous tone, insisting (despite the Left’s gallop toward authoritarianism, what with the Disinformation Governance Board, the Jan. 6 Committee, the claim that “white supremacists” are the biggest terror threat, and all the rest) that she really wants a “strong Republican party.” There’s just one catch: as far as the sage House speaker is concerned, a “strong Republican party” would be indistinguishable from the Democrat party.
Pelosi said this in the context of explaining that she hoped to transform the Left’s climate agenda into a “bipartisan issue.” Turning to the audience, she said in a confidential tone, “You don’t want me to get too political here, do you?” To laughter, she continued:
I mean, the fossil fuel industry, it — they weigh in so significantly. I mean, how could it be that nobody on the Senate side cares — on the — in the Senate, cares about climate. Some of them do, and they talk about it, when it comes to the votes, it just isn’t there, there, just aren’t there. So rather than saying, ‘Well, we have to defeat them,’ no, let’s just try to persuade them. I want the Republican party to take back the party, take it back to where you were when you cared about a woman’s right to choose, and you cared about the environment, and all, and all the great, all the —
Ah yes, the good old days when the Republican party was pro-abortion and in favor of big government environmentalist meddling crippling the American economy. When exactly was that? Well, no doubt Pelosi longs for the days when Nelson Rockefeller, John Anderson, and George H. W. Bush gave us a Republican party that was essentially the same as the Democrat party, and that group is still very much with us, as Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, and Lisa Murkowski remind us at every opportunity.
.@SpeakerPelosi: "I want the Republican Party to take back the party to where you were when you cared about a woman's right to choose, you cared about the environment. Here I am, Nancy Pelosi, saying this country needs a strong Republican Party. Not a cult." pic.twitter.com/h12SSFQKdk
— The Hill (@thehill) May 9, 2022
But they are not the vanguard of the party and may not even be a majority and are unpopular with the party base, and Pelosi finds that … deplorable. She has made this clear before. PJM’s Chris Queen noted that in remarks at the Cambridge Union in the UK in September 2021, “Pelosi spoke to the audience as though she were addressing the GOP directly, telling them that the Republicans have done ‘wonderful things for the country’ in the past. But she chastised the party for allowing a ‘cult’ to ‘hijack’ its agenda.” The “cult” is, of course, apparently the followers of Donald Trump.
Related: Pelosi Urges Her ‘Republican Friends’ to Rescue the Party From a ‘Cult’
When she expressed nostalgia for a pro-abortion, big-government Republican party, our beloved speaker was drowned out by enthusiastic applause. Nevertheless, she persisted, and repeated the “cult” canard: “Hey, here I am, Nancy Pelosi, saying this country needs a strong Republican party, and we do, not a cult, but a strong Republican party.” Wild applause. “So, so let’s make this as bipartisan as possible, and not — bec — Right now, it’s, you know, people say, ‘I signed up to be part of the climate this or that,’ which means nothing unless you’re going to put your vote where your, signing-up, signing-up is. So let’s just strive to make it partisan.” Yes, she said “partisan” there at the end, not “bipartisan,” and that was fitting, since although she obviously meant to say “bipartisan,” she clearly really did mean “partisan,” since her vision of a wonderful bipartisan world is one where the Democrats and Republicans are identical, except, apparently, in the identities of who exactly is feeding at the public trough at any given moment.
Pelosi’s solipsistic vision of a “strong Republican party” that, lo and behold, agrees with the Democrats on all important issues is of a piece with the Left’s increasingly open unwillingness to tolerate dissent. The Jan. 6 witch hunt, the Disinformation Governance Board, the social media giants’ de-platforming of views that depart from the Left’s fantasies (such as the idea that men can’t become women), and more are all manifestations of an increasing authoritarianism on the Left. More will come as well. Henry Ford long ago said, “You can have any color car you want, as long as it’s black.” Now Nancy Pelosi is saying, “You can have any Republican party you want, as long as it’s Democrat.” At least we aren’t yet forced by law to thank her for her generosity to us proles.
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