Last week ushered in a political shift in Washington that could pay dividends to Republicans for years to come. I’m not talking about the nation-wide near-sweep of Republican candidates last Tuesday, but the apparent ascendancy of San Francisco ultra-liberal Representative Nancy Pelosi to the post of House minority leader. As the Democratic leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi would be the one of the most powerful Democrats in the nation, second only to Senator Tom Daschle, assuming he avoids the bloodletting that some insurgent Democrats desire after their disastrous performance in the midterm elections.

In ascribing reasons for their defeat in the elections, there is currently a split within the Democratic Party. Moderate Democrats believe that they did not adequately articulate an alternative to Republicans; they criticized President Bush on the economy, for example, but they did not offer any solutions of their own. The liberal wing of the party, meanwhile, argues that Democrats weren’t liberal enough, and that they should have opposed President Bush more frequently and forcefully, particularly on tax cuts and the Iraqi war authorization.

Nancy Pelosi fits right in with the liberal orthodoxy: she was the only Democratic leader in the House or Senate to vote against the Iraqi war authorization, she routinely casts votes favoring higher taxes, and she even opposed the Welfare Reform package backed by President Clinton that passed with substantial bi-partisan support. If Pelosi becomes the Democratic leader in the House, it’s a sign that liberal Democrats have prevailed over the centrists. That shift in power could spell doom for Democratic hopes in 2004.

In the weeks leading up to the elections, President Bush campaigned tirelessly for friendly candidates, and it paid off in the most successful midterm election for a Republican President since Abraham Lincoln. Most analysts—Democrats and Republicans alike—agree that Tuesday’s election results were a validation of the Bush Presidency. Even Terry McAuliffe, the head of the Democratic Party, was reduced to admitting that President Bush is the most popular president in modern history. Given that, how does it make any sense for the Democrats to move further to the left, to promise more obstructionism, and to become more reflexively dovish and pro-tax? Would a radicalized Democratic party really have fared any better in the midterm elections?

Although Nancy Pelosi may have appeal in places like San Francisco and New York City, her beliefs are so much further from the political mainstream than those of Democrats like Rep. Dick Gephardt—whose job she’ll be filling—that she will become emblematic of her party’s embrace of the hard left, just as many perceived Newt Gingrich to be the embodiment of a Republican shift to the right in 1994. Back then, Gingrich became a corner in Bill Clinton’s successful triangulation strategy, which helped ensure Clinton’s re-election. That sort of positioning could easily happen to Pelosi and the Democrats now.

The danger for the Democrats is that Pelosi may become the modern symbol of the Democratic left, just as Senator Ted Kennedy was when he was still relevant. But unlike Kennedy, who never occupied such a high post within the party leadership, Pelosi will find herself all over the airwaves articulating the message of the Democrats from a position of party authority. Even if she doesn’t exhibit the political tin-ear that caused her to be the highest-level Democrat to endorse Gary Condit’s re-election bid, Pelosi will push the Democrats significantly leftward just as the nation inches closer to the philosophies of President Bush.

Unless Pelosi sells out and moderates her ideals, her becoming the voice of the Democratic Party will be a dream come true for Republicans.