Monday, August 1, 2022

Is Pelosi Setting US Foreign Policy, Whether Biden Likes It or Not?


Mike Miller reporting for RedState 

Quick spoiler: If she’s not, she’s sure as hell trying her damnedest.

As tensions continue to mount over communist China’s alleged threat to shoot down House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plane if she follows through on a planned trip to the Republic of China — Taiwan — this week, as part of a greater trip to Southeast Asia, the Biden White House continues not only to dish up pathetic responses to the ChiCom threat; Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton claimed that the leak last Tuesday about Pelosi’s planned Taiwan trip came “straight from the White House.”

Democrat-on-Democrat back-stabbing intrigue. How can you not love it?

So the question is, will Pelosi visit Taiwan as planned? Or will Sino Joe Biden continue to bow to the demands and threats of Beijing and call the trip off? A more intriguing question: If Joe “China’s not gonna eat our lunch, man” Biden says no-go, will Pelosi go anyway, and Sino Joe be damned?

Incidentally, some have speculated that because the Asia trip itinerary released by Pelosi’s office didn’t include a stop in Taiwan, the trip might have been nixed after the leak. I disagree with the premise, primarily for what should be a given reason: Why on earth would the Speaker’s trip include details of a stop in Taiwan–to alert Beijing when Pelosi will arrive?

I’d be shocked if the itinerary would have included a stop, even if the planned trip had not been leaked.

As Politico reported on Thursday, when Chinese officials chased Nancy Pelosi out of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square 31 years ago, the incident launched a surprisingly fierce foreign policy approach in Pelosi that has pitted her against presidents of both parties and, at times, even aligned her with conservatives.

Here’s a bit of background, via Politico:

The Speaker’s strong progressive stance on global affairs dates back to her tenure atop the House Intelligence Committee and the panel that controls the State Department’s budget. She voted against the 2002 Iraq war authorization, while her Senate counterpart Chuck Schumer supported it.

But she has also talked tough when it comes to what she sees as a defense of democratic ideals and human rights, pushing the Obama administration to strike Syria after its government used chemical weapons in 2013.

Pelosi’s hawkish independent streak, though, is best encapsulated by a decades-long antagonism of China that’s come to define her time in public service. In an interview this week, Pelosi said she views her goals in U.S. foreign policy as threefold: security, economic interests, and “honoring our values.”

“If you cannot stand up for human rights in China because of commercial interests,” Pelosi recently said, “you lose all moral authority to speak out for it in any place.”

Far be it from me to agree with anything that comes out of this stage-4 TDS-riddled woman’s mouth, but I find myself in uncharted waters, here, agreeing with every word she said above.

While Pelosi has yet to give any indication of whether she’ll bow to the Biden administration’s resistance to her planned visit, she did stress the importance of a strong showing of U.S. support for Taiwan and the growing threat the self-governing island nation faces of a full-scale invasion by the ever-belligerent Communist mainland–and she harkened back to Tiananmen Square, all those years ago.

This has been going back since Tiananmen Square. They promised one country, two systems — look what they did in Hong Kong. They made their own problem with Taiwan. If they had one country, two systems, they’d have something to sell.

Again, Madam Speaker, amen.

The bottom line:

Nancy Pelosi’s Trump Derangement Syndrome is one thing, but if Joe Biden had one-tenth of her tenacity and courage to fight for his beliefs as hard as she fights for hers — wait — who am I kidding? Joe Biden has zero beliefs.

Clueless Joe Biden simply signs pieces of paper shoved in front of him by left-wing puppeteers and reads lines he’s told to read (including instructions) on teleprompter screens, and ridiculous note cards with bullet-pointed, step-by-step to-dos.