Sign O the Times

So where did Former Madam Speaker go? Away:

When President Barack Obama, Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hammered out a deal last week to avert a shutdown and fund the government for the rest of the year, Pelosi was delivering a speech at Tufts University near Boston.

But her hands would have been idle if she had stayed in Washington: The White House didn’t want her involved in the talks.

In fact, Democratic and Republican sources tell POLITICO, none of the power brokers wanted her in the room. They feared that her presence and her defense of liberal values would have made it impossible for Obama to cut a deal with Boehner. The sources say Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky also was excluded so the White House could justify keeping Pelosi out.

Was John Boehner there to defend conservative values? Dunno. But whatever happened to the meme that it was the GOP all full of ideologues?