Sherry Chandler » Kentucky’s own
Kentucky’s own
Mitch McConnell, described in the Washington Monthly:
…Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate number two, rose to speak, his light blue tie elegantly setting off the pinstripes. A pale, graying, and somewhat slight man of 64, McConnell looks more like a financial planner than a politician. He has an unblinking, vaguely android-like stare and gives the impression, even when speaking, of wanting to avoid being noticed. But today, he could not keep a hint of a smile from flickering across his normally impassive features. “Colleagues on the other side have said they were going to offer an amendment to advocate withdrawal by the end of the year,” he reminded the chamber. “Let’s have that debate.” With that, McConnell took Kerry’s measure, scratched out the Democrat’s name, replaced it with his own, and offered it for a vote.
…The maneuver was typical of McConnell, the Senate Majority Whip, who over a 22-year Senate career has earned a reputation as a shrewd parliamentary tactician and a ruthless partisan warrior. Those qualities are a major reason why, while the outcome of the November midterms remains up in the air, one election has already been all but decided. In January 2007, Frist will step down, and for the last two years, almost below the radar, McConnell has had the race to replace him as Senate Republican leader—and if Republicans maintain control, Senate Majority Leader—virtually locked up.
That someone with McConnell’s political style stands to assume what is arguably the third-most-powerful elected post in the federal government speaks volumes about the state of the contemporary Republican Party—and about Washington in general.
Kentuckians among us should really read this whole article to see how our senior senator works. We all know he owns the state. Soon, looks like, he hopes to own the country.
Republican strategist Grover Norquist—who once compared bipartisanship to date-rape and played a key role in creating the system that uses corporate money to maintain Republican control—told us that if he could pick the president, McConnell would be among his top three choices. (Jeb Bush would be another, and Norquist was uncharacteristically coy about the third.)
This profile is really sort of scarey, painting a McConnell who is every bit as partisan as Bill Frist but competent, in control of the money, and with no presidential ambitions to soften his partisanship.
Since November 2004, he has given over $300,000 to the campaigns and PACs of his Senate colleagues and GOP challengers. Two months before the election, he has already given the maximum amount to almost every Republican Senate candidate in a competitive race.
So here’s where I show my naiveté — and I suppose my essential Democratic nature. Look at this passage here:
If Republicans do hold onto the Senate—and they might not—McConnell will likely have a smaller majority than Frist has enjoyed. A leader hoping to get legislation passed would probably respond by being more conciliatory toward the minority—but Republicans didn’t pick McConnell because of his talent for conciliation. “I think he’ll be more likely to pick a fight,” says the Heritage Foundation’s Darling. With a confrontational Republican leader, a narrow Senate majority, and an unpopular, lame duck president, the next two years don’t figure to see much landmark legislation passed. Instead, if the past is any guide, Majority Leader McConnell will focus only on measures that support Republican power or drive a wedge between Democrats, and will do everything possible to keep campaign dollars flowing to the GOP. But if and when that happens, don’t blame McConnell. He’ll only be doing what he was elected to do.
So what’s the point?
What’s the point of holding on to power if you don’t use that power to accomplish anything, good or ill. And, of course, by accomplishing nothing, the Congress accomplishes ill, as the last sixish years have illustrated.
Is it just so the rich can get richer?
Is it to destroy the opposition so that these radical conservatives (talk about oxymorons) can have unfettered control of the country and accomplish Karl Rove’s dream?
Is it just to have power the way a miser just has gold, not to accomplish anything with it but to hoard it and gloat?
I guess it’s all of the above.
It’s what has always appalled me above all else about the Republican revolution — its essential meanness.
This profile describes McConnell’s struggle with polio when he was two years old (he must have been one of the last):
Though he remained able to walk, doctors, fearing that pressure could make his legs develop abnormally, instructed his mother to keep her son off his feet for several years. Adhering to this stricture seems to have forged in McConnell a kind of dogged determination, as well as a faith that patient, disciplined effort will ultimately be rewarded. Today, the only sign of his childhood illness is a slight limp when he walks down steps.
I think the limp must still be there — in his soul.
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