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its not as if anyone really cares about what a pol stands for, just what they can be portrayed as standing for....

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How many out goaing Dems used their ' free speech ' time to point the finger of blame at Pelosi as the reason they lost , and wouldn't be returning to D.C. next year ?

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Talk to lawmakers privately, and many will freely acknowledge that from a public relations perspective it makes little sense for Nancy Pelosi — who made history as speaker and fought tenaciously to be minority leader — to remain the face of Democrats.

But many of those same lawmakers cast their vote for Pelosi in Monday's closed door Democratic caucus meeting — and the embattled San Franciscan triumphed by a 150-43 margin.

It's a vivid illustration of how congressional leadership elections are decided by factors often barely visible to the naked eye. It does not matter much what the pundits think, where the polls stand, or who can be easily demonized by the opposition.

Here are five reasons why what may look like a self-defeating move by Democrats actually made perfect sense to lawmakers gathered in the spacious caucus room of the Cannon House Office Building Monday.

Standing up to Obama

One of the subtexts of this leadership drama is that the hand Democrats are giving Pelosi is also an elbow aimed at President Barack Obama and his once-cocky, now humbled West Wing team.

Pelosi's decision to defy tradition — it is more common for party leaders to step down after a loss of power — in part reflects this mindset: There is no damn way she's going to take the fall for the election-day debacle.

Pelosi and her allies devoutly believe the greater fault lies with the White House. For the better part of a year, they have been quietly laying the groundwork for the argument that the Obama forced members to take tough votes, then failed to build and maintain adequate public support for the Democratic agenda.

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Based on the results of the latest National Journal Political Insiders Poll, if the Republicans fail to score major gains in the Senate and House on Nov. 2 they already have their scapegoat -- Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele. This week, the Political Insiders were asked to judge which of their respective national party committees "is doing a better job in the run-up to the mid-term elections." When comparing the RNC to the Democratic National Committee, the 93 GOP Insiders who responded to the poll this week were withering in their assessment and 73% said that the DNC was out-performing the RNC. Only 15% said that the RNC was besting the DNC and 12% said neither committee had stood out.

In their comments, the GOP Insiders blamed the RNC's woes on chairman Steele who has wandered off message with verbal miscues and alienated GOP major donors. "Steele has been a huge disappointment, especially on the fundraising front," said one GOP Insider. Others used words like "embarrassment," "horrible" and "idiot" to describe Steele. "[DNC chairman] Tim Kaine is always on message, Michael Steele rotates which foot is in mouth," said another GOP Insider.

Indeed, Steele has been gaffe prone from practically the beginning of his rocky tenure as party chairman when he dismissed conservative hero and radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh as an "entertainer." At the start of '10 when Republicans were beginning to see a path toward gaining control of the House he bluntly said, "not this year," and compounded that sin by wondering aloud whether the party was "ready" for that responsibility, adding, "I don't know." And in July Steele told a GOP fundraiser in Connecticut that Afghanistan was a war of "Obama's choosing." That brought a rebuke from the party's senior statesman on national security matters, Arizona Sen. John McCain (R). The party's '08 standard bearer called Steele's comments "wildly inaccurate" and said there was "no excuse" for them.

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Republican National Committee political director Gentry Collins resigned today with a four-page letter that harshly criticized the performance of the organization under chairman Michael Steele.

In the letter, obtained by Politico, Collins complains of poor fundraising by the RNC as compared to past years. He writes that while the RNC raised $284 million in the 2002 cycle and $243 million in the 2006 cycle, it has brought in just $170 million thus far in the 2010 cycle.

Much of that money, he writes, did not come from large donors, reflecting poor outreach efforts. The small donations, he suggests, "are reflective of the anti-Obama/Pelosi/Reid wave that drove energy and intensity to historic highs this cycle" - meaning they cannot generally be credited to Steele's group. In addition, he writes, it costs more to generate small donations, pushing the RNC's fundraising costs in the 2010 cycle to as much as 70 cents on the dollar.

Collins, who is described as a "respected" veteran operative, also reveals that the RNC is in debt.

"In the previous two non-presidential cycles, the RNC carried over $4.8 million and $3.1 million respectively in cash reserve balances into the presidential cycles," he writes. "In stark contrast, we enter the 2012 presidential cycle with 100% of the RNC's $15 million in lines of credit tapped out, and unpaid bills likely to add millions to that debt."

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I think national politics had a lot to do with this. I think the Obama administration and I think the Speaker — that’s who they used to say, ‘We have to get rid of these folks

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