When the Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, the Democrats had dominated the House for the previous 40 years with a firm grip. Now the GOP has become even mroe ruthless than its predecessors.

While President Bush promotes democracy worldwide his fellow Republicans stifle it in the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrats charged in a 147-page report released on Tuesday.

Democrats said Republicans have suppressed dissent, limited debate and jammed through legislation despite vows to open up the deliberative process when they took control of the House a decade ago after 40 years of Democratic rule.

[...]

The Democratic report quoted Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, as saying in July 2003: "If Democrats, when they were in the House majority, jammed through plenty of bills without Republican participation ... their highhandedness was nothing compared to what House Republicans are doing now."

The report noted that Joe Scarborough, a former House Republican turned television talk show host, recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal:

"Ten years ago, Republican congressional candidates like me were running as Washington outsiders promising to balance the budget and pay off the federal debt. We campaigned against the 'Imperial Congress' and promised Americans that if we got elected, we would be different. We lied."

Link.

When extreme conservatives like Ornstein and Scarborough admonish House Republicans, it certainly means something. Kudos for Pelosi for hammering the right on this issue. Hopefully the American people will listen (and big media will allow them to!).