This sounds exactly right to me:

What conservatives are missing here is that this is a fight they were winning before they started gunning for Pelosi. Their best ally in this fight was Barack Obama, whose desire to “move forward” rather than focusing on the past had been the subject of much consternation. Had conservatives simply reached out to grab the hand that was being extended to them, they could have gotten what they wanted.

But in their zeal to score a tactical win, the right has made a truth commission more likely not less likely. Obama wanted to avoid a backward-looking focus on torture in part because it distracted from his legislative agenda. But if we’re going to be looking backward anyway, thanks to conservatives’ insistence on complaining about Pelosi, then the move forward strategy lacks a rationale. And far from forcing a standoff in which Pelosi will abandon her support for an investigation, the right has forced her into a corner from which she can’t give in to moderate Democrats’ opposition to such a move without looking like she’s cravenly attempting to save her own skin.

Republicans were getting exactly the result they wanted, right up until they thought to go after Pelosi. Now, the liberal Democratic House Speaker and the conservative Republican RNC chairman are saying the same thing: let’s investigate and get the whole story.

Indeed, Pelosi has been using this to great effect. When the right argues that she’s lying or was somehow complicit in Bush’s alleged crimes, she always responds with the same compelling answer: “Let’s have an investigation and see who’s right.”

As far as the strategy goes, Republicans should have taken “yes” for an answer.

If Republicans really want to find out “what Pelosi knew” (not that an answer to that question would actually, you know, have any bearing on whether torture was okay), it just so happens that the best way to do that is to establish some kind of independent investigatory authority.

As they say, be careful what you wish for…

Update: Consider the fact that more people think the CIA probably lied about what they told Nancy Pelosi than not:

Forty-three percent (43%) of voters nationwide say that it’s at least somewhat likely that the Central Intelligence Agency misled Nancy Pelosi about the use of waterboarding when interrogating prisoners.

But the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey also found that 41% say it’s not likely the CIA did so.

In typical partisan fashion, 62% of Democrats give Pelosi the benefit of the doubt while 62% of Republicans hold the opposite view. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 38% say the CIA may have misled the current House speaker, but 48% say it’s not likely.