For Pelosi, Good News and Bad

Good news for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today in a new Rasmussen poll: That tiff she had with the CIA over whether they briefed her on torture didn't damage her favorability rating.

The bad news is that that rating wasn't very high to begin with.

The new poll finds 34% of U.S. voters have a favorable view of the California Democrat, while 56% view her unfavorably. Rasmussen says those numbers have been roughly the same since February.

Pelosi said last month that the CIA had lied to her at a 2002 briefing about whether it was using waterboarding on suspected terrorists. That gave rise to questions about what she knew and when she knew it. Republicans seized on the conflict and called for an investigation.

Rasmussen concludes that Americans viewed the incident as an "inside-the-beltway furor."

That I can understand, given voters' preoccupation these days with their own uncertain economic circumstances. What I don't understand is why people generally have such negative views of Pelosi. Is she seen as too liberal, too San Francisco, too female?

Your ideas on this are welcome, dear readers, especially when they are expressed respectfully and not in all capital letters.