Nancy Pelosi is repaying a political debt by supporting Rep. Murtha for the Majority Leader position. John Murtha is 74 years old and would be assuming a lot of responsibility with the job. He carries some baggage that the Democrats might not want on their victory train. Steny Hoyer is 67 and has served two terms as Minority Leader.

Though most of the Democrats are very appreciative for the work that John Murtha did during the election, they are not ready to take away the position from Steny Hoyer -- one he seems to have earned by his past service. Furthermore, they don't want to remind the voters that both parties have had their corruption problems.

Prediction: Hoyer wins.

The New York Times published a scathing editorial this morning on the disaster that Nancy Pelosi barely avoided yesterday by her own caucus voting against her wishes and electing Steny Hoyer Majority Leader in the House.

They also hint at Hoyer having some problems of his own, but certainly not being the ethics disaster that is John Murtha. But the Times does think that Pelosi has already damaged herself significantly with the Murtha debacle and the Hastings-Harman fiasco in the House Intelligence Committee:

Nancy Pelosi has managed to severely scar her leadership even before taking up the gavel as the new speaker of the House. First, she played politics with the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee to settle an old score and a new debt. And then she put herself in a lose-lose position by trying to force a badly tarnished ally, Representative John Murtha, on the incoming Democratic Congress as majority leader. The party caucus put a decisive end to that gambit yesterday, giving the No. 2 job to Steny Hoyer, a longtime Pelosi rival.

Prediction - Steny Hoyer will be Speaker of the House within two years, before Pelosi's term is up.

Yesterday, I reported that Murtha would lose. I had been told that Pelosi felt obligated to support John Murtha for the post of Majority Leader. She knew he wouldn't win. The support for Steny Hoyer was strong.

I just couldn't understand that stories that indicated that she was putting a lot of effort into the election of Murtha. This wasn't really a smack-down of Pelosi. If she was weak, Hoyer would have run for the Speaker position. He knew that he couldn't beat her. While she was being elected unanimously, most of the voters knew that they were going to vote for Hoyer.

For the Democrats, this was the right choice.

Watching the race for majority leader in the House is not pleasant. The choices, as many progressives have noted, are less than ideal. Steny Hoyer is a corporate Dem who started a K Street Project for the Democrats, spars openly with the new Speaker, and was and is wrong on Iraq. The alternative, endorsed by Speaker Pelosi, is Rep. John Murtha, a man who is even more conservative, who has his own ethical issues (especially on earmarks), but who essentially turned the election around by becoming a leader on Iraq.

One of the best things about the election is that neither you (unless you're a Democratic member of the House) nor I have a say in it. We can pass the buck on this one. The worst thing is that we still have to live with the outcome. And, being a pundit, it's my job, I suppose, to provide some sort of key insight into how these Democratic members will or should vote.

I have no more inside information than most people. My state does not even have a Democratic member of Congress. But I do know that if the Democratic caucus wants to respond to the will of the voters, they should elect John Murtha over Steny Hoyer, even with the scandal baggage. I'll explain why after the jump.

Well that was quick. This news came in the form of a Drudge siren earlier today. The big to-do is that the Democrats have awarded themselves a nice long weekend.

No sessions Monday, and no vote on Tuesday earlier than 3PM, which gives lawmakers an easy Tuesday morning flight to get in. Snarky comment: That first 100 hours is going to take awhile at this rate.

OK. So obviously no big deal right? This is the way they've done things for a long time. And besides, Monday is the Elvis Day.

Well, the Democrats have only themselves to blame for this (albeit small) PR goof. Steny Hoyer made a big deal earlier about the members not expecting the cushy life they've been used to. The Washington Post led the charge in what was apparently more perception than reality.

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who will become House majority leader and is writing the schedule for the next Congress, said members should expect longer hours than the brief week they have grown accustomed to.

"I have bad news for you," Hoyer told reporters. "Those trips you had planned in January, forget 'em. We will be working almost every day in January, starting with the 4th."

Oops, Nevermind!

I guess almost every day translates to, not Monday.

In somewhat of a surprise, Nancy Pelosi gave John Murtha the thumbs-up this Sunday in his bid to become house majority leader. Left in the cold is Maryland's Steny Hoyer, who had run against Pelosi in two previous intra-party contests. The biggest reason for her endorsement? Murtha's leadership on the Iraq war.

Iraq is front and center in Democrats' minds, and it should be. The voters demanded as much. Though there are political risks in each and every position that the party may take on the war, they seem to have gotten the message that they need to bring real pressure on the Bush administration. Selecting John Murtha as majority leader certainly does just that. Now let's see if the rest of the house agrees with Ms. Pelosi.

Wow. I didn't expect Nancy Pelosi to get this much of a smackdown by her own majority-mates. Her ethics-challenged pick for House Majority Leader, John Murtha, lost to Pelosi's archenemy in the House, Steny Hoyer, by a final tally of 149 to 86. Not even close!

Pelosi has a lot of fence mending to do within her own caucus. But there is a bright side for her. She famously claimed, "Maybe it takes a woman to clean house" on CNN - now she should feel free to investigate Rep. Murtha (among other Democrats) with the same zeal that she went after Republicans...

I was kind of looking forward to another House Majority Leader crippled by corruption. Guess, I'll have to settle for the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, for now (as reported by ABC News' Brian Ross).

In January, we were told that the new Democrat-led Congress was going to save the country, change the world and make every bald guy grow hair. Instead, we have a Congress that continually gets beat by a lame-duck president and hasn't passed even one requisite spending bill:

With none of the 12 fiscal 2008 appropriations bills enacted, both the House and Senate will take up continuing resolutions to extend federal government funding at current levels.

But wait, they're still working on really important legislation. Way more important than passing bills that will keep our country moving:

Two other measures are expected to see House floor action next week. One bill (HR 2693) would protect workers against an artificial-butter flavoring chemical called diacetyl, a chemical that is used in the production of microwave popcorn.

Yeah, that Nancy Pelosi has taken that mandate handed to her and really run with it, hasn't she. I sense that the country is so much better because of Democratic leadership. Or not.

Speaker Pelosi and her compadre Steny Hoyer have spent so much time on stupid investigations and meaningless resolutions condemning everything and everyone connected to the war in Iraq that they've failed to do what they were actually put in office to do. It may just be the shortest leadership run in congressional history if this keeps up.

This country needs more Democrats like Rep. Steny Hoyer who spoke to the Jerusalem Post on Thursday:

Iran with nuclear weapons is unacceptable, new House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told The Jerusalem Post hours after entering the party leadership position.

...

Hoyer said the Democrats' position, like that of the Bush administration, was that preventing a nuclear-armed Iran had to be done through "discussions, negotiations, sanctions." Hoyer added that the US needed to work with the international community to block Teheran's nuclear ambitions.

At the same time, Hoyer said the use of force hadn't been taken off the table.

After my last call for a security Democrat, I'm glad for the country that we found one. While most Democrats, (Joe Biden) have appalling records on national security. Apparently there are still some who will not sacrifice the country for their own personal gain.

Steny Hoyer beat out the Pelosi-backed front-runner, Jack Murtha who claimed that he had the votes.

As expected, Pelosi won the position of Speaker of the House, the first woman to do so:

Nancy Pelosi was unanimously named speaker-elect by House Democrats Thursday, the first woman to be ensured the post that constitutionally is second in line of succession to the presidency.

Let's say a prayer for Dick Cheney tonight.

Hoyer won by an astounding 63 votes. I guess the new Congress didn't like Pelosi's candidate.

Nancy Pelosi has gotten her first high-profile invitation since becoming the likely next speaker of the House. President Bush called and invited Pelosi and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer to lunch.

"They will a start a conversation on a strategy to talk about how we're going to work together to get things done," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

The White House will break its silence on their run of bad luck shortly. President Bush has called a 1 pm ET press conference.

Ladies and gentlemen, your new Senate Demcratic leadership: Nevada's Harry Reid is officially majority leader. No surprise there. Dick Durbin from Illinois is the whip. New York's Chuck Schumer will stay on as campaign committee chair. Patty Murray of Washington will serve as conference secretary, while Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan will head the party steering committee. Here's a full wrap-up of today's secret vote.

As for the House, the elections there later in the week could get a little sticky:

House Democrats face a difficult choice when they pick their leaders Thursday, now that speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi has rejected her current top lieutenant in favor of longtime confidante John Murtha of Pennsylvania.

Murtha, a blunt Vietnam veteran whose call for U.S. troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq helped rally Democrats for the election, had appeared to be the underdog to Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House Democrats' whip.

Hoyer continues to insist he'll take the number two spot... but then Karl Rove obstinately predicted the GOP would hang on to Congress and we see how that turned out.

Politicians will say the stupidest things. This year, being an election year, had more than the average. Let's review the worst quotes of 2006, from the Democrats:

1. "The gavel of the speaker of the House is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America's children." -- Incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi describing the incoming Congress better than anyone else.
2. "We have a lot of kids who don't know what work means. They think work is a four-letter word." -- Hillary Clinton to the Chamber of Commerce
3. "[He has] a career of slavishly supporting the Republican Party." -- House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, describing black GOP Senate candidate Michael Steele

At least hat's what's being reported. Wasn't the Democrats and the media crowing about the House voting for a "responsible withdrawal" from Iraq just last week? What's left?

I, along with many others including those on the left, debunked the act that Pelosi passed on Iraq as a con job that does nothing, similar to the Levin-Reed Amendment that was defeated in the Senate yesterday. Dick Morris has more on what the House actually did in his latest article for The Hill, The Left Redefines 'Withdrawal':

So the left in Congress has redefined its goal. Instead of a pullout, it merely proposes a "reduction" and a "redeployment." Under a Democratic administration, the war will clearly go on.

Now Steny Hoyer is claiming that the Democrats will introduce more useless Iraq bills next week:

"We're not skipping Iraq. We think Iraq is critically important," Hoyer said. "I would imagine it's possible that we would be scheduling legislation either as an amendment or as a free-standing bill next week on some particular facet."

Interesting. And silly. Wonder what "facet" of the war they are going to focus on? Here's House Republican Whip Roy Blunt's reaction:

"This is like a legislative train wreck. No meaningful action.

...You can see from the Democrat approach on these Iraq issues they don't intend to create opportunity for any real debate"

A very appropriate response, methinks.

This is unbelievable. Well, maybe not. I should let you decide. Oh but why? I'm the one blogging, looking for the nuggets of news that somehow slip past the MSM. How they miss it, why it wasn't on the evening news I don't know. Almost all of them. But some lawmakers are apoplectic.

This is why we should not have elected those Democrats. They want lawmakers to work. A full week even (well almost 5 days). You know what that means? That means more laws (and maybe more solutions). Worst of all it is a full out attack on American family values. Check this out:

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who will become House majority leader and is writing the schedule for the next Congress, said members should expect longer hours than the brief week they have grown accustomed to [...]

"Keeping us up here eats away at families," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. "Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."