Friday, November 10, 2006

On Democrat Civility

Civility is the word of the day (or minute or second). There's been lots of talk of civility in Washington since the Democrat victory in Tuesday's election (see here, here, here, and here), but how much civility is being shown? There's been a nice coffee with the new Senate leadership and a lunch with soon-to-be Speaker Pelosi. But is it really civil outside the photo ops?

Howard Kurtz says no.

Twelve years after congressional Democrats were relegated to the minority offices, six years after they were evicted from the White House, the liberals are hootin', hollerin' and high-fivin' their way through the week.

"WE WON!!! WE WON!!! WE'RE TAKING BACK AMERICA!!! The Stephanie Miller Show was a full-on gloat zone this morning."

That's from the L.A. radio host's own blog , and she was so gleeful that she started playing the nah nah nah nah nah chant seconds after saying hello.

Unseemly? They don't care.

Nope. And who can blame them? There seems to be a lot of myopia where politics is concerned these days. In fact, most bloggers can only remember the last 12 years when Republicans have run Congress and forgot the 40 years of Democrat rule before that. They forget the autocratic rule of Democrat committee chairs and subchairs or the way those chairmanships were doled out.

Now, Nancy Pelosi is talking a lot about civility. I even dug up this that Pelosi said back in 2004. It calls for bipartisan administration of the House as well as a variety of rules for bringing up legislation. I'm all for civility and bipartisanship. I'm just curious if Ms. Pelosi will be proposing these rules for the House when she becomes Speaker in January.