Nancy Pelosi Says Dems May be Compelled to Prosecute Bush Officials

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that House Democrats would by open to the possibility of investigating and potentially prosecuting former Bush Administration officials for alleged crimes committed during the Bush years. Pelosi said that Democrats may even be forced to pursue prosecution in some instances, even though doing so might be politically costly.

"I think you look at each item and see what is a violation of the law and do we even have a right to ignore it. And other things that are maybe time that is spent better looking to the future rather than to the past."

That's not up to us to say that doesn't matter anymore. We cannot let the politicizing of, for example, the Justice Department to go unreviewed. I want to see the truth come forth."

Pelosi is attempting to walk a fine line between her radical liberal support base and the more moderate voters and independents that helped elect Barack Obama in November. The liberals want prosecutions not just of former officials in the Bush Administration, but of President Bush and especially Vice-President Cheney. Moderate voters tend to reject extreme and overt partisanship, and could look unkindly on a year or more of partisan Democrat investigations while there is so much work to be done.

For his part, President-elect Obama seems to be walking the same fine line. He recently told ABC that he believed the country, "need[s] to look forward as opposed to looking backwards." But he allowed that "nobody is above the law." The incoming Obama Administration, however, would be less likely to support prosecutions because they would serve as a distraction to the president's agenda. Obama ran as a post-partisan politician. If he is true to his campaign image, he will convince partisan Democrats that investigating Bush, while perhaps personally satisfying, is not in the interest of the country, or the Democratic Party.