Pelosi add liberals to leadership team despite pledge to govern from center

The Hill:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has promised to govern from the middle next year, but her new House leadership team is shaping up to be more liberal than her old one.

The departure of Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), coupled with left-leaning additions to the leadership lineup, is causing angst among Democratic centrists and conservatives.

House Democrats managed to add at least 20 new members to their caucus, many of whom hail from traditionally Republican areas of the country.

But despite the additional centrist Democrats, the caucus may move to the left because many committee chairmen and members of leadership are liberal.

It is unclear if this was an orchestrated move by Pelosi to consolidate power among a trusted group of advisers or simply a function of a significant number of Democrats not wanting to begin the Obama era with intra-party squabbles.

But members of the caucus have already taken notice. And in the absence of a last-minute shake-up of the leadership races — which are growing less contentious by the day — a slate of largely liberal members is set to move up the leadership ladder.

Following the elections last week, Pelosi said Democrats need to “govern from the middle” and work on a bipartisan basis to accomplish their ambitious agenda.

Barring a last-minute change, the only centrist in House leadership will be Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), a longtime friend to the conservative Blue Dog Coalition.

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This is one reason why I think it is very likely that Democrats will lose seats in 2010. They have been able to win seats in conservative districts by masking their liberalism, but this moves shows just how ineffective conservative and moderate Democrats are in the House.

Republicans will be able to argue that a vote for a guy who votes for Pelosi as Speaker is a vote for liberalism regardless of what positions he takes on issues. Once Pelosi and company start trying to impose the evils of liberalism on the country they will lose much of their support.