On Red Eye last night, Newt Gingrich repeated his two-step plan for Nancy Pelosi.
1) you can stay in Congress, representing San Francisco-types, but 2) not as Speaker.
"Look, I think that you can be an individual member of the House from San Francisco and you can represent your most whacked-out constituents and that's fine.
We have people on both the Right and the Left in the house who have unusual views, but the Speaker of the House is the only constitutional officer in the legislative branch mentioned in the Constitution. They are third in line to be president. They have a huge national security responsibility.... and I believe in her press conference last Thursday, she had two fundamental mistakes that should not be acceptable in the Speaker of the House."
Then, on Sean Hannity last night.
"Well, there are two parts to this. The first is that Nancy Pelosi as a San Francisco congresswoman can believe anything she wants to. She represents the kookiest wing of her constituency and as a congresswoman that'd be fine.... we have a fair number at any given time on the Right and the Left that might be a little bit unusual, a little bit out to lunch on certain issues. But Speaker of the House is the only constitutional office in the legislative branch..... the Speaker has a direct concern on national security..... I thought that measured as Speaker of the House what Speaker pelosi did last Thursday was totally unacceptable.
