As if Nancy Pelosi didn’t have enough problems — the polls, the retirements, the ObamaCare implosion, and the prospect of losing her speakership — she now must face a daily bashing by Republicans who sense she and her caucus are vulnerable on the ethics issue. The Hill reports:

House GOP Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Sunday that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was breaking the promise to have the most ethical Congress “every day.”

“Nancy Pelosi said in the very beginning this is going to be the most open, honest and ethical Congress in history,” Cantor said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday morning, “and what we’re seeing, she’s breaking that promise every day.”

Cantor and other Republicans are of course hounding Pelosi to dump Rangel, which for inexplicable reasons she is refusing to do. (Is he going to vote no on ObamaCare if she takes away his Ways and Means chairmanship? Of course not.) The Hill report then notes, ominously for the Democrats, that “Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) intends to introduce a privileged resolution next week calling for a vote on removing Charles Rangel as head of the Ways and Means panel.” Ouch. Another vote, another sticky situation for the Democrats.

Well, unfortunately for them, Pelosi didn’t take seriously her promises on transparency or corruption. Instead, we’ve seen broken promises in regard to posting key bills ahead of the votes, the perpetuation of earmarks, the refusal until the health-care summit to let the cameras into health-care deliberations, and of course the refusal to dump ethically impaired members. It’s a pattern of hubris and indifference that contributed to Republican losses in 2006. Cantor and his troops hope the same is true in 2010.