may have grown up as the daughter of a meat-and-potatoes Baltimore politician, but she’s much more San Francisco than Baltimore. Meaning, she lives in a leftist alternative reality so strange that, to her, the entire world of normality seems like the workings of a sinister conspiracy—a conspiracy that must be investigated and rooted out.
Nancy’s nefarious conspiracy theory
August 19, 2010
Is Nancy Pelosi making a bid to join Robert Welch, longtime leader of the John Birch Society, as a truly great conspiracy theorist?
It would seem only an inspired paranoic could find it so unaccountably strange—cue the “Twilight Zone” theme music—that there’s a public outcry about a mosque project planned two blocks from Ground Zero that an investigation is in order. But Pelosi senses foul play.
“There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some,” she told KCBS radio in San Francisco late Tuesday. “And I join those who have called for looking into how this opposition to the mosque is being funded.”
So fire up the subpoenas and get Henry Waxman on the case. Or reunite Woodward and Bernstein to “follow the money.” Whatever. Someone needs to expose the nefarious financial tentacles.
What everyone else in America sees as a natural reaction against an ill-advised project, Nancy Pelosi sees as … Chinatown.
Her mental health is fine, of course; it’s only her perspective that’s warped. She is such a deeply parochial liberal that every time public opinion swings in a direction she dislikes, she can only imagine malign financiers or puppet-masters at work.
She famously discounted the Tea Party as an “astroturf” movement, directed by the Republican Party. She couldn’t process the idea of a genuine grass-roots revolt against big government. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen in San Francisco. If Pelosi were to star in a sci-fi movie, it’d be “The Speaker from Another Planet.”
Let’s indulge Madame Speaker and consider the sources of the mosque controversy.
A blogger named Pamela Geller was on the case early. Pelosi might not have heard, but in early 21st century America, it’s possible to set up blogs without corporate backing or dead drops of cash from shadowy sources.
Next, reporters and columnists for The Post brought a tidal wave of public attention to the project. This is the kind of thing major newspapers do, especially in an area that has been so sensitive and covered so minutely.
Then there’s the most important Democratic opponent of the project, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. His top backers are MGM Mirage, the casino, and Weitz & Luxenberg, the law firm. After some digging, perhaps Pelosi can find if they’ve had a subtle, long-term agenda to back the influential Democratic politician most likely to pull the plug on offensive Ground Zero projects.
In trying to explain her remarks, Pelosi said we need transparency in the funding of the mosque and in the funding of the opponents. This is bizarro moral equivalence. Transparency is so important in the case of the mosque because of the Saudis’ history of backing institutions with radical imams and educational materials. The opponents, in contrast, are simply exercising their First Amendment rights to comment on, and oppose, a controversial project.
The speaker also says the mosque is merely “a zoning issue in New York City.” As if it isn’t adjacent to the site of an attack on the nation as a whole. Strictly local zoning issues don’t engender an endorsement—and then a walk-back, and then a walk-back of the walk-back—from the president of the United States.
Pelosi was clearly irked that reporters asked her about the mosque when she wanted to talk about a local San Francisco matter. She should get used to it. As long as the mosque is going forward, it will be a subject of debate, and supportive Democrats will have to squirm—if they aren’t, like Pelosi, lashing out. With economic growth slowing and Obama’s ratings sagging, the summer of recovery is looking more like the summer of meltdown.
It’s the second miserable August in a row for Democrats. Maybe they want to strike the month from the calendar. Or at least find out who’s funding it.
[end of Lowry column]
