Just a reminder: House GOP can’t block a bailout bill

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - Speaker Nancy Pelosi has the plenary power to bring a bill to the floor of the House, and no parliamentary procedure can help a minority to block a majority will to pass it. That’s one fact that has to be remembered while Pelosi and Barney Frank blame the House GOP over the collapse of the bailout bill:

“I didn’t know I was going to be the referee for an internal G.O.P. ideological civil war,” Mr. Frank said, according to the AP Thursday, in the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”

Mr. Paulson sighed. “I know. I know.”