In the view of many Congressional experts, Nancy Pelosi is the most powerful Speaker of the House in a hundred years, more potent even than the legendary “Mr. Sam” Rayburn, the longest serving speaker in history. Not since the reign of “Uncle Joe” Cannon at the turn of the 20th century, this argument goes, has a speaker exercised such thorough dominance over the people’s house.

So riddle us this: Why is Pelosi floating the idea of using an arcane procedural movement to have the House simply “deem” that it has passed the Senate’s version of a health care bill (which many of her members oppose, for various reasons), and then go on to vote on a separate bill to make fixes in the bill it hasn’t technically voted on? Probably...