Republicans Continue to Drag Out Their Pelosi/CIA Stunt

Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly at 2:11 PM on May 21, 2009.

Maybe it's just me, but when I saw another story about a new round of Republican attacks on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D), my first reaction was, "Wait, they're still talking about that?"

A member of the House Republican Conference will offer a resolution on the House floor Thursday calling for a bipartisan investigation into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claim that the CIA misled her on the use of waterboarding, two Republican sources tell CNN.

"The speaker has had a full week now to either produce the evidence or retract and apologize, and she's done neither," a senior Republican aide told CNN. "There is no choice now. A bipartisan investigation is needed to get to the facts."

Just so we're clear, if a Democrat says, in reference to credible allegations of widespread Bush administration wrongdoing, "There is no choice now. A bipartisan investigation is needed to get to the facts," that Democrat is a bitter partisan, stuck in the past, anxious to undermine national security. If a Republican says the same thing about Pelosi, he/she is simply supporting accountability.

Of course, the resolution is just another stunt, which is an extension of the larger stunt. There's no way the Democratic House majority is going to support this resolution. Indeed, if the House were to launch a bipartisan investigation every time a lawmaker questioned the honesty of the CIA, Congress would never get anything done and a fair amount of the Republican caucus would quickly find itself at the center of a probe.

Indeed, just yesterday, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) agreed with the Ranking Intelligence Committee Member Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) about the CIA having misled the House.

In the meantime, John Kerry is backing up Pelosi; Arlen Specter thinks Pelosi is right; and Time magazine pulled together the available information and concluded the Pelosi is "probably right." Best of all, "New questions surfaced Wednesday about the accuracy of a CIA document meant to settle who in Congress knew about severe interrogation methods approved by the Bush administration."

And yet, tomorrow morning, there will be a whole new round of whining from House Republicans, and the media will find Newt Gingrich's concerns on the subject utterly fascinating.

Tagged as: democrats, cia, republicans, gop, torture, kerry, pelosi, boehner, specter

Steve Benen is "blogger in chief" of the popular Washington Monthly online blog, Political Animal. His background includes publishing The Carpetbagger Report, and writing for a variety of publications, including Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect, the Huffington Post, and The Guardian. He has also appeared on NPR's "Talk of the Nation," MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show," Air America Radio's "Sam Seder Show," and XM Radio's "POTUS '08."