New Kind of Speaker

The Speaker of the House is historically the leader of the majority. Only in the DeLay era was power invested in the Majority Leader, and a big pile of nothing installed as the Speaker. Nancy Pelosi will reassert that position and so Hoyer or Murtha will be less relevant. By attempting to hand-pick the position she's doing so, and Jim Moran says she'll get her way.

I only support Murtha because that way there won't be any backstabbing between the two spots. Hoyer is not on Pelosi's team and you don't need to give the media another reason to write their "Democrats in disarray" stories. Murtha's conservative but so is his district, and on economics he's actually fairly populist. Having in the Majority Leader post someone from the Rust Belt who's constituents have practically all lost their manufacturing jobs might shift the balance in Washington away from neoliberalism and globalization that sells out our industrial base.

Murtha's ethics problems are real (though some are VERY old), but they could be blunted by immediate ethics and lobbying reform at the top of the agenda. I hope Pelosi made that clear to him. I don't like hearing that he's fighting against reform behind the scenes.

In an excellent but little-noticed piece last month, the New York Times brought us up to speed:

"In the last year, Democratic and Republican floor watchers say, Mr. Murtha has helped Republicans round up enough Democratic votes to narrowly block a host of Democratic proposals: to investigate federal contracting fraud in Iraq, to reform lobbying laws, to increase financing for flood control, to add $150 million for veterans' health care and job training, and to exempt middle-class families from the alternative minimum tax."

This would be ominous and terrible if it suddenly became the way business got done in the House. But I honestly think Nancy Pelosi will set the agenda, and Murtha can take the flak from the right as the so-called "liberal hate-the-troops boogeyman" when in fact he may be their ally, in some ways.

UPDATE: To add, Taylor Marsh is right, Murtha deserves a leadership position because he led on the issue most prominently facing the country, Iraq. He was out in front of practically everyone because the military trusts him enough to get him the information he needs to make decisions. That's a good person to have in a time of war.