Queen Pelosi Has An Enemies List

Used to be having a documented enemies list was grounds for you to become Public Enemy No. 1. Heck, Richard Nixon has been out of office for nearly 35 years and dead for 15 and we still hear about his list of enemies.

Alas, it's perfectly fine if you're a Democrat to have an enemies list. Heck, you even get a glowing profile out of the deal. Although I have to say Rush Limbaugh is going to be disappointed he's not at the top, although we know he's Nos. 1 and 1a on Obama's list.

In fact, three of the top five are Democrats. So much for unity.

So who’s on Pelosi’s list now?

1. Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.). No Democrat has done quite so much in so short a time to arouse Pelosi’s disdain as the failed-Redskins-quarterback-turned-ambitious-North-Carolina-congressman.

The conservative, anti-abortion Shuler would have made the list for voting against both bank bailout bills and the stimulus package, but the way he went about it didn’t help; Shuler told an audience back home that “House leadership and Senate leadership have really failed” on the $787 billion package.

The thing that riles Pelosi most, according to several House aides, is that she believes Shuler’s motives are as much political as they are ideological — and that he’s picking a fight with her to position himself for a run against Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) next year.

Unless Shuler is planning a long House career, picking a fight with Pelosi may indeed have its advantages: His 2006 opponent, incumbent GOP Rep. Charles Taylor, scored points by portraying Shuler as a Pelosi acolyte.

“I don’t know if Shuler is talking without thinking or if he’s just making the calculation that distancing himself from Pelosi is never a bad thing to do,” said a senior House leadership aide.

2. Rush Limbaugh. He’s Pelosi’s sworn enemy — and she views him as beneath contempt and unworthy of her comment.

Asked about the right-wing talk-radio king the other day, Pelosi said: “I don’t speak to that. I’m the speaker of the House. I don’t get into the popular culture.”

3. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski (D-Pa.). Pelosi and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee made an all-out effort to help the veteran Scranton congressman win a tight race against longtime nemesis Lou Barletta last fall.

So aides say the speaker was taken aback when the western Pennsylvania representative bucked leadership by voting “no” on the original version of the stimulus bill.

He voted for the conference report later, but hard feelings persist.

4. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.). It’s no surprise that Pelosi isn’t crazy about the young, aggressive minority whip, who has marshaled an anti-Pelosi GOP insurgency in the House.

Pelosi has good personal relationship with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). But members of her leadership cadre are starting to really dislike Cantor, despite their public pose of studied indifference. Part of the reason: Cantor is employing many of the same techniques Pelosi used so successfully to torture former House Speaker Dennis Hastert when she was the Democratic whip in 2002 and 2003. [hey, I thought Democrats were opposed to torture?]

It remains to be seen if Cantor’s power-of-“no” philosophy will work — congressional approval ratings have actually spiked on the stimulus — but he’s gotten traction by nitpicking Pelosi’s proposals and magnifying the majority’s blunders.

5. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.). The fiscally conservative gadfly would have topped the list had he not reversed his first stimulus “no” by voting in favor of the final package.

Even so, the most outspoken of the Blue Dog Democrats is still on thin ice with leadership, thanks to his comment that he “actually got some quiet encouragement from the Obama folks” for initially bucking Pelosi on the stimulus. That required a hasty Obama-Pelosi cleanup effort that resulted in a Cooper clarification — although he continues to express dissatisfaction with what he sees as Pelosi’s top-down leadership style.

Some of those Blue Dogs, Cooper and Shuler in particular, could possibly be good candidates to cross the aisle if the Republicans are able to close the gap in the House next year.

Read on. The rest of the list is all Democrats. Doesn't seem like there'll be many tears shed when this woman is dethroned.