Republicans targeting Pelosi and Clinton

Sunday Telegraph:

Republican strategists plotting their party's comeback after it lost control of Congress have identified the "first lady" of Democrat politics as a key target in the 2008 White House campaign — even though she will not be running.

Senior party operatives told The Sunday Telegraph that they are already co-ordinating plans to attack Nancy Pelosi, the liberal Californian congresswoman and Speaker-in-waiting who suffered a damaging rebuff from her own party caucus last week.

The Republican strategy is not only to undermine Mrs Pelosi's control of the House but also to associate her in voters' minds with Senator Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination.

"Two years of Pelosi gives a good idea of what four years of Hillary will be like," said Tom DeLay, the Republican powerbroker who ran his party in the House before he was caught up in a lobbyist corruption scandal. "They are both committed liberals and we will make that clear to the American people."

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Mrs Pelosi's opening-week blunders will make the Republican tactics easier to execute. Her ally John Murtha, a Vietnam veteran who is leading calls for an immediate US troop pull-out from Iraq, lost heavily in a party ballot for the position of majority leader, one rung down from speaker, despite Mrs Pelosi's heavy lobbying for him. That embarrassment presages the trouble she will have holding together the Democratic majority, whose members range from left-wingers from inner-city districts to centrist congressmen from suburban areas in the Midwest and West.

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They now plan to focus on the difficulty she is likely to have in running the House, splits within Democrat ranks on Iraq and her boast that she we will oversee "the most ethical Congress ever" in the wake of Republican corruption scandals. "Pelosi has set the bar extraordinarily high for the conduct of her caucus, herself and even Hillary," said a former Republican House strategist.

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To some extent the Republican strategy as described by the Sunday Telegraph is that if Pelosi bumbles in her leadership in the House, it would suggest that Hillary would probably bumble as President. I don't think they need Pelosi to make that case.