Pelosi Book Tour Attracts Impeachment Protesters

At The BradBlog, Alan Breslauer reports that when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was out trying to pimp her new book she met with a storm of protesters demanding that she put impeachment back on the table. (via Avedon)

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's appearance Monday at a West Los Angeles college to discuss her recently published book was marred by dozens of protesters and several angry outbursts by audience members who demanded Pelosi immediately authorize a House committee to hold impeachment hearings against George W. Bush.

The Speaker made it clear she would not support any effort to hold impeachment hearings against George W. Bush Bush saying that he "will be gone in a hundred days."

Halfway through her discussion at The American University of Judaism, where more than 300 people paid $30 each to hear Pelosi speak about her upbringing and her family's impact on her political career as detailed in her book Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters, the topic shifted to Congress's historically low approval rating and how it reflected on Pelosi’s tenure as Speaker.

At which point there were more critical outbursts, and one protester was actually forcibly removed. When Breslauer tried to ask Pelosi a question during the book-signing session, he, too, was forcibly escorted out.

In the interview that followed (conducted by American University of Judaism's Rabbi Robert Wexler), Pelosi defended her tattered record with the old Innocent Bystander Myth:

“People voted for change and they voted for Democrats who will take our country in a new direction,” Pelosi said during a victory speech in San Francisco on Nov. 8, 2006.

But Pelosi, who became House Speaker, never managed to exact the change she promised. She explained that she and her colleagues tried vigorously to pass legislation to end the war in Iraq.

"The public doesn’t want to know about process and 60 votes, they want outcomes, they want results," Pelosi said, explaining why Democrats could not end the war as promised prior to the midterm 2006 elections.

But Pelosi’s comments appeared disingenuous to many, since she was largely responsible for crafting an appropriations bill in backroom discussions with House Democratic leaders, passed in June, and then worked secretly with the White House budget director offering up concessions on Iraq war benchmarks if Bush would agree to the domestic spending attached to the final bill with little debate preceding a vote on the measure.

"Disingenuous" hardly covers it.

Pelosi's refusal to consider impeachment and Obama's insistence that we need to "move on" are understandable but carry grave risks for the political future of the nation. In a new series at The Bush/Cheney Impeachment Papers, I discuss that danger in detail in an Open Letter to both of them.