By many measures, [Pelosi] has accomplished as much in her first months as Newt Gingrich did in early 1995, when the GOP took control of the House. She's got through a responsible budget, a war supplemental funding bill and a new panel on global warming. Now the Senate has to duplicate her level of discipline.
This is from an op-ed that is (I think) making the point that Pelosi, though liberal in spirit, has to act pragmatically--and a bit more conservatively--than she might prefer in order to, you know, get anything done. It's an old point, though I suppose there's no harm in reiterating it.
Read the article. There's a whole lot to take issue with in it, and Ezra does a pretty good job starting off.
But to compare Nancy Pelosi (or just about anybody) to Newt Gingrich as a way of saying good things about her is bizarre. Gingrich, after all, was emphatically not a pragmatist and, though he may have passed a handful of initiatives in his first weeks atop the House, one would think the proper metric for a liberal like Eve would be whether or not the Speaker is using her power--pragmatically of otherwise--to do good things. Pelosi's doing pretty well on that score. Gingrich, on the other hand, used that same time to advance the Contract with America.
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