Tuesday, January 19, 2021

No Profile In Courage

Donald Trump has almost left the building. But Mitch McConnell has survived. Jennifer Senior writes that history's judgment of McConnell will be damning:

McConnell may think that the speech he gave on the Senate floor on Jan. 6, objecting to the election deniers, will spare him history’s judgment. It will not. It did not make him a hero. It simply made him a responsible citizen.

If McConnell ultimately votes to convict Donald Trump in his second Senate impeachment trial — he has suggested he’s open to the idea — that won’t make him a hero, either. He will simply have done the right thing and likely not for the right reasons: As Alec MacGillis makes plain in his excellent book “The Cynic,” Mitch McConnell never does anything unless it serves the interests of Mitch McConnell.

Which is why McConnell made his unholy alliance with Donald Trump in the first place. By his own admission, McConnell plays “the long game” (it’s the name of his memoir, in fact). He’s methodical in his scheming, awaiting his spoils with the patience of a cat. So if hitching his wagon to a sub-literate mob boss with a fondness for white supremacists and a penchant for conspiracy theories and a sociopath’s smirking disregard for the truth meant getting those tax cuts and those conservative judges … hey, that’s the cost of doing business, right?

The problem is that what goes around comes around:

For years now, the Republican Party has been radicalizing at a furious rate, moving rightward at a far faster clip than the Democrats have moved to the left. Political scientists even have a term for it: “asymmetrical polarization.” How we got to this frightening pass is complicated, but chief among the reasons is that the G.O.P. has been on a decades-long campaign to delegitimize government. Run against it long enough, and eventually you have a party that wants to burn the system to the ground.

McConnell, now on his seventh term, has been cynical and power-hungry enough to keep up with his party’s rightward lurch at every step.

When Republicans embraced the Southern Strategy, deciding that racial resentment — if not hatred — would power their rocket to the majority? No problem. His dalliance with the civil rights movement was only a youthful fling.

When the Republicans made their pact with social conservatives and evangelicals, realizing that pro-business policies couldn’t capture a majority’s imagination? No problem. He abandoned his support for abortion. (Yes, McConnell was once pro-choice.)

When anti-tax sentiment overtook the party’s desire to contain the deficit? No problem. He loved tax cuts, loved business, loved the rich (read Jane Mayer’s knockout McConnell profile from April for details about all the thumbs he has in moneyed pies).

When preserving power prerogatives overtook his party’s concerns about the former Soviet Union? No problem. McConnell refused to hear out warnings about Russian interference until weeks before the 2016 election (at which point he buried them), and he refused to consider bipartisan legislation that would attempt to curb foreign meddling until he earned himself the moniker “Moscow Mitch.”

When his party went from free trade to nativist populism, powered by xenophobia and racist resentment? Not a problem. He’d side with the populists, including their dangerous Dear Leader, until his workplace was overrun, five people were dead and the Constitution itself was among the critically injured.

Mitch has never been a profile in courage.

Image: BuzzFeed News

12 comments:

Lorne said...

Mitch McConnell is a poster boy for all that is wrong in American politics today, Owen. However, he is just one of so many (think Jim Jordan and Lindsey Graham as two more stellar examples). I really don't think there is any desire on the part of the Republicans to return to any semblance of tradition and integrity (perhaps always a fiction) in government.

Steve Cooley said...

I am scared by the fact that he has been re-elected 6 times. The majority of his constituents must be blind and deaf, or bought.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Our democratic society has a multitude of electors who know the first part of this saying and think the second part describes Joe and Jane down the street. I think it was Eisenhower's health crisis that brought on the two term limit for presidents. Our real problem is the lack of term limits on the average MLAs, MPs, Councilors, Senators, Congressmen, etc.

Owen Gray said...

McConnell personifies what the Republicans stand for, Lorne -- wealth and privilege.

Owen Gray said...

A very good point, Steve. If the same term limit applied to McConnell as it does to presidents, Mitch would be long gone.

Anonymous said...

I'm not so sure that Moscow Mitch is "methodical in his scheming, awaiting his spoils with the patience of a cat." Like most Republicans, he's lazy. It's a lot easier to confirm incompetent judges on party-line votes than to craft and pass legislation. He couldn't even kill the ACA with Republican control of Congress and the presidency. He's an evil man to be sure, but vastly overrated as a strategist. And in a couple of days, he'll be reduced to senate minority leader. Good riddance!

Cap

Owen Gray said...

McConnell is the ultimate survivor, Cap. Somewhere along the way, he lost his way.

the salamander said...

.. I've maintained that McConnell will end up napalmed historically. I also felt immediately that if the two Georgia seats flipped it would be end of the road for Trump and McConnell anyway. Distasteful as it may seem, I also know Mitch and his wife are a matched pair of sleezebags that will never eat in public again.. unless security watches their food prepared. They can expect spit saliva, ground mouse & rat droppings, floor grease and dirt in every serving. The story of his wife steering funding into their home state is digusting.. None of it goes toward poverty, education, healthcare, pollution control in one lf the perpetually impoverished, ignorant & polluted red states.. and its ridden with drug abuse. I read horrifying articles of the social cost just of meth burn victims. Its why I use the term 'Fiefdom' more and more re politics. The gerrymandering alone is astonishing in its brazeness. Flying south, I know right away when we're over Kentucky. The flattened mountain top lakes are orange. (This is where Kenney wants to take Alberta.. and we all know about the Bitumen tailings 'ponds' leaching into the Athabaska watershed as if its just a septic tank outflow pipe to the arctic .. Remediation ?? Who are we kidding.. we can't even clean up Grassy Narrows or Boat Harbour Nova Scotia)

jrkrideau said...

Until my dying day, Sir,
That whatsoever king shall reign,
I'll be the Vicar of Bray, Sir.

Owen Gray said...

McConnell and others of his ilk will leave lots of tailing ponds in their wake, sal.

Owen Gray said...

Mitch has always paid homage to those who butter his bread, jrk.

Anonymous said...

There should be an investigation into voter fraud in Kentucky. Mitch went into the election with an 18% approval rating and won with 58% of the vote. Some counties had more votes cast than registered voters. And, the voting machines (not Dominion) cannot provide an audit trail (while Dominion's machine can).

UU

Owen Gray said...

That's interesting, UU. There's a big gap between McConnell's popularity and his vote totals. Something smells.