Mitch McConnell

 Interesting fissures within the Republican Party are appearing.

I've seen an attempt to distance national conservatism from MAGA. With all due respect, it looks to me like a distinction with little difference. NatCon was never anything but an attempt to lend some coherence to Trumpism, without much success.

There's also the current debate on whether Mitch McConnell is an effective leader of Pubs in the Senate. Of course, the MAGA fever swamp's take is that the GOP became a new critter in 2016 - for the better, in their estimation - and whatever usefulness McConnell had had was irrelevant in the new landscape. But he has his staunch defenders as well.

I have found him frustrating over the years. Maybe part of my predisposition is on superficial grounds. His barely-flappable demeanor and his appearance (I can't get over George Will's likening him to a turtle) seemed not quite up to the task in a few situations over the years. He never employed brinkmanship in debt-ceiling debates, for instance. Most recently, his affirmative response to the question of whether he'd support Trump in a 2024 presidential race - well, made me sick.

But I'm just a pundit in flyover country. There's a lot about what's required to maneuver successfully in the Senate over the course of a long career that I'm quite sure I know next to nothing about. I'm willing to interpret his measured tone of voice and care to avoid inflammatory wording as a steadiness of nerves that his position requires.

And I want to make clear that I have no problem whatsoever with the obstructionist stance he took during the Obama years. He did what he could to prevent and then repeal the "Affordable" Care Act and stimulus packages. Those positions earn my loud applause.

I think I weigh in on the side of the current debate that says he needs to stay put as Senate Minority Leader. It's a position that requires chops one doesn't acquire quickly. McConnell knows the lay of the land, and, in that understated way of his, will surely proceed on the understanding that Trumpism is toxic for the Republican future. I think the recent midterm results have deepened that understanding. 

Anybody else that the opposition in this debate would put forward would have at least some taint of NatCon/MAGA, I think. Sticking with Mitch is a wise first step in seeing if that infection can be cured.

Master of the long game? Unmatched command of Senate rules, procedure and tradition? Not gonna cut it this time, Mitch

 I sat there and watched it live this evening. My reaction wasn't exactly a drop of the jaw. It was more of a sense of, well, now we know:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday he would support Donald Trump in 2024 if he became the Republican presidential nominee, less than two weeks after condemning the former president for the Capitol insurrection.

“The nominee of the party? Absolutely,” McConnell told Fox News’ Bret Baier on Thursday when asked whether he would back Trump if he got the nomination.

The remark comes amid a dramatic, public row between the former president and McConnell in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots — an event for which McConnell blamed Trump in scathing statements on the Senate floor. Trump in turn blasted McConnell last week as an “unsmiling political hack” who is weakening the Republican Party.

During his interview with Baier, McConnell stopped short of offering his immediate support for Trump in what is likely to be a crowded Republican 2024 field. McConnell stressed that numerous other Republicans had also hinted their intentions of a 2024 presidential run.

“There’s a lot to happen between now and ’24,” McConnell said. “I’ve got at least four members that I think are planning on running for president, plus some governors and others. There’s no incumbent. It should be a wide-open race and fun for you all to cover.”

McConnell signaled his desire to move on from the 2020 elections and focus instead on retaking the House and Senate in 2022. When asked about Trump’s role in the Republican losses in the special elections for Georgia’s Senate seats, McConnell flatly said: “I don’t have any further observations to make about that. We’re looking forward.”

McConnell also rebuffed Trump’s attack against him that he was injuring the party’s prospects. McConnell maintained that there was no “civil war” within the party and that it remained competitive with Democrats in razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate.

Notice how he went in for that "move on" crap. And responded to the question about a Republican civil war with the same old citing of electoral victories in the House, Senate, and state governments - as if the censures issued by those state governments were negligible - and exuded nothing but confidence.

You're 79, Senator. Do you really want to go out on such a disgraceful note?

It doesn't appear there's going to be any moving on from Trump or Trumpism for the GOP

 The Very Stable Genius is ensconced at Mar-a-Lago, with considerably fewer means of communication at his disposal than he had a few weeks ago, but he can still issue statements on a letterhead that looks strikingly similar to the official seal of a current US president. 

On such a sheet of paper, he let loose with a blast of vitriol against Mitch McConnell that also included, for good measure, yet another round of don't-forget-how-many-votes-I-got-and-what-good-shape-the-economy-was-in-before-the-pandemic braggadocio:

Former President Donald Trump fired back at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday, releasing a scathing statement after McConnell published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal blaming him for the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm,” Trump said in a written statement. “McConnell’s dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse.”

He wasn't done grinding Mitch into the dust:

“The Democrats and Chuck Schumer play McConnell like a fiddle — they’ve never had it so good — and they want to keep it that way! We know our America First agenda is a winner, not McConnell’s Beltway First agenda or Biden’s America Last,” Trump said in his statement, adding, “Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again. He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country.”

And then comes this low blow:

Trump also went after McConnell's wife, Elaine Chao, his own former secretary of transportation, insinuating that her family’s business presented a conflict of interest.

“Likewise, McConnell has no credibility on China because of his family’s substantial Chinese business holdings. He does nothing on this tremendous economic and military threat,” Trump said in the statement without clarifying why, given those circumstances, he had appointed her to his Cabinet in the first place.

Chao resigned her position two days after the Capitol riot, which she called “entirely avoidable.” 

Granted, McConnell hasn't exactly delivered a consistent message that would bolster a bold-leader image, what with his rhetoric - before the convict/acquit vote, immediately afterward, and in the WSJ op-ed - being glaringly at odds with his actual vote:

As Yogi Berra might say, when McConnell came to a fork in the road, he took it.

McConnell’s theory is that he can have it both ways: Simultaneously denounce Trump and provide him cover in the hope of reconciling the divisions in the party that cannot be reconciled. McConnell, though as shrewd as they come, will fail to satisfy both Republican and independent voters — and donors — horrified by Trump and the movement of those who want Trumpist populism to define the party.

McConnell’s choice is emblematic of the GOP’s rot. Republicans claim to fight for fidelity to the Constitution, traditional morality, law and order, economic liberty, fiscal responsibility, etc. As a conservative, I believe these are things worth fighting for. But most Republicans today don’t see these as principles to stand for, they see them as slogans to campaign on.

I recently wrote a post about the censure-mania that has broken out among state-level Republican parties. Since then, I've come across this pronouncement from a Pennsylvania GOP leader, regarding Pat Toomey's vote, that expresses the majority sentiment in the party when it comes to fealty to Trump versus any other consideration:

A Pennsylvania GOP official became the subject of online mockery Tuesday after bashing Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) for voting to convict former President Donald Trump during the impeachment trial last week.

Washington County GOP chair Dave Ball, during an interview with local CBS affiliate KDKA, said Pennsylvania voters didn’t send Toomey to Washington to “vote his conscience” and should have stood by Trump.

Lindsey Graham is an example of a different type of Trump-era Republican. He's never expected anybody to give more than surface-deep heed to his so-called positions. In 2016, he called the Very Stable Genius a xenophobe and bigot whose nomination would destroy the party. He's now got a diametrically opposed message:

Instead of defending Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) from Donald Trump’s scathing rebuke on Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) went on Hannity to tell the Senate Minority Leader that he should just accept Trumpism as the future of the Republican Party. 

“I know Trump can be a handful,” Graham told the Fox News host, “but he is the most dominant figure in the Republican Party. We don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of taking back the majority without Donald Trump.”

Calling Trump a “hell of a president on all of the things that conservatives really believe in,” he added, “I’m sorry what happened on January 6th. He’ll get his fair share of blame, but to my Republican colleagues in the Senate, let’s try to work together and realize that without President Trump, we’re never going to get back in the majority.”

I'm still unwilling to put myself on record here or at Precipice as writing off a future for the Republican Party with finality. I'm well aware of the resources - donor money, on-the-ground volunteers, precinct committees and county parties, enlistment of viable candidates for offices at all levels - needed to build a party that cn truly contend on the national level.

But I'm nearly there. I honestly don't see how a party this poisoned by a cult of personality can build the "big tent" of which it speaks, especially considering that the Trumpists have no use for actual conservatives.

If the GOP must be abandoned to the slavish devotees of Donald Trump, let the break be clean. And let us articulate why it happened in a way that any even minimally engaged citizen can understand.

 

 

Mitch, Twitter and a glimpse of a possible future

The true implications of Twitter suspending Mitch McConnell's account just hit me full-on.

He had an actual mob on his property, screaming death threats. He used the medium of Twitter to spread awareness of the reality he experienced. It was simple documentation of what occurred.

And he's a public official. Senate Majority Leader. His personal safety is a national security issue.

And he was silenced for letting the American people know what he deals with.

Twitter is a private company and can sort of hide behind the fact that they can establish and enforce their house rules any way they want, but be sure that this is but a taste of what they'd do with governmental power.

That's what's at stake here, folks.