And this is why Nancy Pelosi will STAY House Minority Leader.

It’s because of incredibly tin-eared statements like this.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she opposes a cut in congressional pay because it would diminish the dignity of lawmakers’ jobs.

“I don’t think we should do it; I think we should respect the work we do,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. “I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded.”

Now, put aside for the moment the fact that the woman who said this had been making money hand over fist via legal insider trading when she was Speaker of the House, back in the day. What makes Nancy Pelosi think that anybody – anybody – is really concerned about whether or not Members of Congress (or the people who work for them) have any dignity? People hate Congress, and the people who work for Congress: currently, cockroaches tie Congress for popularity. And a lot of this is due to, hey, Nancy Pelosi! – Because four years of running the House into the ground can do that to public perceptions.

By the way, it looks like there’s going to be a sequester; the likelihood that Senate Republicans were going to cave on this, let alone House ones, pretty much died over the last few days. I’m hearing nothing privately that would contradict either Speaker Boehner or Senate Minority Leader McConnell’s public statements that the sequester will happen if the Democrats don’t stop trying to squeeze more taxes out of the stone; in fact, what I’m hearing privately backs up what I’m hearing publicly. Congressional Republicans might have been more amenable to, ah, ‘revenue enhancements’ if they hadn’t already had to swallow unambiguous tax hikes at the end of last year; but they did have to give ground on that, and they’re already institutionally aware that doing so left them tap-dancing on quicksand from the Republican base’s point of view.

Whether this ends up hurting the Republican party in 2014… well. The Democrats certainly think that it will; mind you, they thought the same thing about Obamacare and the Lily Ledbetter Act. That’s why we have elections.

Moe Lane (crosspost)