Let's start by assuming that Nancy Pelosi is a shrewd political operator. Despite what many people (myself included) may have said about her, you don't get to be Speaker of the House without a significant amount of political savvy, so let's grant her that.

Let's further assume that her primary goal is to guarantee Democratic victory in the upcoming election. This is also a defensible assumption; she did nothing in 2006 to further a real agenda, but relied on a vague "drain the swamp" slogan. As a result mostly of Republican scandals (thank you again, Mark Foley), Democrats took control of Congress, but thanks to Nancy Pelosi they had nowhere to go from there. If her primary goal is to win the next election, and she doesn't look beyond that, it would explain the lack of real progress in the 110th Congress.

Since the easiest way to win an election is through failure and blame, it stands to reason that Pelosi would want the bailout bill to fail in a way that she could blame the Republicans. And that's exactly what happened.

Republican leaders are accusing Pelosi of making a partisan speech during the debate that caused a dozen Republican House members to vote against the bill. Of course, it doesn't look good if Republicans want to claim they're putting "country first," but I suppose Boehner et. al. didn't think about that. In addition, Joe Scarborough reported that after the time for voting ended but the vote wasn't being finalized, Barney Frank was yelling to close the vote.

Sounds like this theory has some serious backing.

Congratulations, Nancy, you did it again!