Reply #34: yes, it's "inside baseball", but it's important to understand how this happens. [View All]

Letting Stark get "reprimanded" in any way would have generated from the caucus, which is chaired by Emanuel, so this action generating in caucus is no surprise there. Most likely w/cooperation of the (republican) conference. Disciplinary stuff comes out of the caucus (conference for the republicans).

Emanuel & Hoyer are friends, ideologically similar and work in concert between the caucus and the floor. Emanuel chairs the caucus who would have approached the floor leader (Hoyer), who runs all the action on the floor. Hoyer placed the call to Stark, telling him that the floor workers decided that if he apologized, all the floor people would make sure the censure failed. This whole apology business generated on the floor - between the caucus, the conference, the whips and the floor leader. Hoyer put out a stmt to the press about his phone call to Stark over the weekend.

Yeah, sure, Pelosi is at the top of that ladder, but as I'm sure you know, the Speaker is rarely involved in the day-to-day runnings of the House and is even more rarely actually on the floor. The Speaker is doing the strategic policy planning, but the floor leaders are running the place.

I'm just saying it's a bit unfair to lay everything at the foot of the Speaker when it's really others running the house every day, especially since those leaders have those positions by election, the Speaker has no say whatsoever over who has those jobs.