Thank You Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced today that she is not going to run for Democrat Leader for the next two years. 

Americans owe her a huge debt for the way she held things together during the debacle of the Trump presidency. We also owe her for the way she kept her cool and worked to save our democracy during the Republican coup attempt of 1/6/21.

Republican senators and House members played a key role in fomenting the attack on the capital. They cooperated fully with Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. If they had been true to their oath of office and behaved as Americans instead of Trump toadies, the coup attempt would never have gotten off the ground. Those same Republicans ran and hid when their actions led to violence.

But Nancy Pelosi — who was targeted for murder by the mob which roamed the halls, shouting “Where’s Nancy?” — kept her cool. While the bragging swaggering crowd of Republican men tucked tail, ran, and hid, she worked the phones, in an effort to mount a more effective defense of our nation’s capital. It was her determination that the House and Senate would go back to work, in spite of the damage and sewage strewn around that allowed Congress to complete the nation’s business that day and ratify the election of President Biden.

She wanted the world to see that America’s government was not vanquished. That it was functioning. And that is what the world saw.

We the People owe her, big time.

I, personally, will not stop talking about January 6 until every Republican member of Congress (they were all Republicans) and every Republican state attorney general who backed Trump in his attempt to overturn our democracy and install himself as a dictator has been removed from positions of public trust. Too many of them continue to hold office, and they do so with the blessings, support and imprimatur of far too many of our religious leaders, including a good many Catholic bishops.

The appalling behavior of Republican media and quite a number of “star” Republican office holders and candidates after Speaker Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband was brutally beaten by a hammer-wielding MAGA nut in an assassination attempt against the Speaker is, in my mind, a clear example of what is wrong with our country today. It was flat-out evil. 

Nancy Pelosi stood against the destruction of our democracy. She was an effective, fair and decent leader who stood for integrity and honesty in government throughout her decades in the Speaker’s Office. 

Many Catholics focus entirely on her opposition to laws against access to legal abortion as the only thing she has done that matters. This gets a little tiresome when I consider that those same people — including our bishops — also supported and continue to support the people who tried to overturn American democracy and plunge this country into a bloody civil war. 

A just and stable government is always the greater good. The government which Republicans are working toward is patently unjust and violently unstable. If they succeed in their goals, many people will die. 

Nancy Pelosi has been a voice of patriotism, decency and integrity, in a government that was honey-combed with fascist traitors and cowards. Her absolute focus on the preservation of American democracy was one of the most important reasons why America survived Trump  as a free nation. 

We are still in a battle for our democracy. I can only hope that someone who is just as skillful and committed to preserving our democracy steps up to take her place. 

I respect Nancy Pelosi. I am grateful to her. I wish her and her loved ones well.