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How Pelosi Saved Boehner's You-Know-What | Mother Jones
Wow, it really is "send in the clowns" over there.
Wow, it really is "send in the clowns" over there.
In past years, a House speaker and the leader of the opposition would probably confer before such a crucial vote and figure out how to move the legislation through the chamber. (Boehner and Pelosi both were supporting this bill, albeit Pelosi quite reluctantly.) And many outside observers assumed that Boehner and Pelosi had indeed convened prior to this vote, that a conversation such as this had occurred: Nancy, I can get up to 170 or so votes, but not all those tea party guys. John, I can tell you that at least 50 Democrats are going to hold their noses and vote for this stinker. Yet when the final dramatic vote arrived, Pelosi was surprised that Boehner was so short of the magic 216. "When they didn't come to us for votes," Pelosi recalls, "we thought they had the votes on their own."
But Boehner didn't. So the Democrats, having waited to see how many Republicans would back the measure, started filling in the gap. Pelosi didn't have to send any signal. Her Democrats, she says, are a "sophisticated" group, and they could see that without Democratic support the bill would fail.