And I'm Taking You With Me

Nancy says if the Dems are going to walk off the cliff into the UberBailout trap, they're taking the GOP with them.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is telling Democrats that she will not support President Bush’s $700 billion bailout of the financial sector unless there is significant Republican support for the controversial plan.

The politics of the bailout are tricky and dangerous for both political parties, particularly since it comes weeks before the presidential and congressional elections.

As a result, Pelosi (D-Calif.) has effectively sent the message that if she is going to jump off a cliff to rescue Wall Street, she wants House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and George W. Bush holding her hands when she leaps.

Pelosi made this scenario clear at a lengthy closed-door meeting of House Democrats on Tuesday. Many of those present said they took Pelosi’s message to mean that a “majority of the minority” needs to support the bill before she will bring it to the floor.

Good for her. Here's the interesting part however:

To get that kind of support, President Bush needs to go on television to speak directly to the public, and get on the phone to rally his fellow Republicans, said House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.).

“If it’s a crisis,” Clyburn said in a statement, “and we all need to come together, then as leader of this nation, the president needs to take the lead and bring the country together.”

Oh please please please let Preznitman go on prime-time national television and plead his case to Americans on why he has to take a trillion of our taxpayer dollars or so to save Wall Street CEOs a few weeks before a Presidential election.

That would be awesome. It would be followed by, oh, 50 million Americans going "Screw you and the Republicans" simultaneously. It would probably be noticeable in Washington.

[UPDATE] Yep! That's exactly what Preznitman's gonna do, get up in front of America and tell them that you need to give King En-Er-Eee a thousand billion dollars and stuff or America gets it!

President Bush may make a prime-time speech as early as Wednesday night to put pressure on Congress to approve a $700 billion plan to bail out Wall Street, a senior administration official told CNN.

Oh yes. PLEASE remind everyone the Republicans want to steal from the poor to pay the rich.