ONCE AGAIN, MITCH Mc CONNELL, “OPENS MOUTH, INSERTS FOOT”

 

 Mitch McConnell is sometime referred to as "Yurtle the Turtle"

Thank goodness for today’s miniature recording devices.

Just as President Richard Nixon made famous the White House tapes that eventually caused the first resignation of a US president.  Just as a hidden camera videoed the now infamous “47% Mitt Romney Speech” that played so much against Romney in the 2012 election.  Now, we have a new audiotape of the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, revealing his divisive remarks at a recent meeting of Republican billionaire political donors.  These individuals were all convened in a private strategy session set up by the infamous Koch brothers.

Everyone is aware that the minority leader is, and always has been, a grumpy, mean-spirited man. 

It has also become well known that it was Mr. McConnell that made it clear on the day of President Obama’s inauguration, that the #1 goal of the Republicans was to, “Make President Obama a one-term president!”  No, the goal was not for making life better for all Americans, or for getting health care for those Americans that were in need.  Back then, the most important goal for the next 4 years, according to this minority leader, was to get the first black American president out of office.

So, it is very understandable why President Obama made the joke at the last White House Correspondents Dinner where he responded to the complaint that he wasn’t meeting enough with the Republican leaders in Congress.  The president had said that people were asking, “Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?’  There was then a pregnant pause…..and the president asked the audience with a somewhat sly smile, “Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?”

This senior, grumpy, Kentucky senator, that has always been extremely partisan, he had earned this jab from the president by his record number of filibusters that he has sponsored as the Senate minority leader.  Due to sponsoring the most Senate filibusters since the beginning of this nation’s founding, it has required the Senate to have a super-majority of 60 votes to pass just about every bill in the Senate.  This of course, goes totally against the normal Senate requirement of “majority rules”.  So instead of a bill passing with 51 or more votes, it takes 60 votes for passing a filibustered bill. For a bill to pass, that of course would require for some Republicans to join the Senate Democrats….and we all know where that possibility would and did, obviously end up.  With the current “do nothing” Congress...passing bills just ain’t going to happen.

But I digress…..

 

 

The "Brothers Koch" that inherited there father's millions, while never working a day in their lives.

This latest recording of the get-together of the minority leader with the Koch Brother’s billionaires really says it all as to where this Senator is coming from, and it is not in support of the senator’s Kentucky constituents.

In order to make the senator’s views totally crystal clear, I will list them in bullet points, with just what was stated by the senator in this latest secret recording:

·       McConnell begins his statement by thanking the Koch brothers personally “…for the important work you’re doing. I don’t know where we’d be without you . . . rallying, uh, to the cause.”

·       The senator has no positive ideas to promote for his fellow Americans.  If he were to become the majority leader, he would pursue only more Senate obstruction. McConnell promised that, “…we’re not going to be debating all these gosh darn proposals. That’s all we do in the Senate is vote on things like raising the minimum wage . . . extending unemployment . . . [like] the student loan package the other day, that’s just going to make things worse.”

·       During the meeting, McConnell tells the billionaires, “We [will] own the budget. So what does that mean? That means that we can pass the spending bill. And . . . we will be pushing back against this bureaucracy by doing what’s called ‘placing riders in the bill’. No money can be spent to do this or do that”  In other words, more obstructionism.

·       McConnell makes it clear that he won’t suggest cutting the subsidies to Big Oil or the current humongous Pentagon budgets. Absolutely not. McConnell also pledges to his millionaire funders, “We’re going to go after them [Democrats] on health care, on financial services, on the Environmental Protection Agency, across the board.”

·       McConnell reassured these billionaires that “We now have, I think, the most free and open system we’ve had in modern times.” Of course, this comment is in reference to the Citizens United decision.  Because of the conservatives on the Supreme Court, McConnell says they have established precedents to give corporations the right to spend unlimited funds in elections. This is a victory for “open discourse,” McConnell argued.

·       Per the senator, “The Supreme Court allowed all of you to participate in the process in a variety of different ways. You can give to the candidate of your choice. You can give to Americans for Prosperity, or something else, a variety of different ways to push back against the [Democrat] party of government.”  (FYI: Americans for Prosperity is the right-wing Koch funded political vehicle that has been referred to as the “third-largest political party in the United States.”)

·       To put things into the proper perspective, the senator described what he called the “worst day of my political life.” No, it was not the 9/11 terrorist bombings or the disastrous vote on invading Iraq. According to McConnell, the worst day of his political life was when a Republican congress passed, and George W. Bush signed, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms, that put limits on big money in US politics.  So, that being the worst day, the happiest day must have been the Citizens-United decision by the conservatives on the US Supreme Court.

·       McConnell ended his talk by repeating the Republican mantra against taxes and regulation, arguing, “If we want to get the country going again, we need to quit doing what we’ve been doing.”

As a side issue for the senator’s difficult re-election campaign, Senator McConnell’s campaign manager, Mr. Jesse Benton, has had to resign from McConnell’s campaign with only 2 months left before the election. Mr. Benton resigned because of his possible involvement in the bribing of an Iowa state legislator for changing his support from Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul in the 2012 Iowa Republican presidential primary.

The Kentucky Secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes, is McConnell’s challenger.  Massachusetts  Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) rightly stated while campaigning in Kentucky for Ms. Grimes, “Mitch McConnell is there for millionaires and billionaires. He is not there for people who are working hard playing by the rules and trying to build a future for themselves.”

Based on McConnell’s record, there is no wonder that with a 35% approval in his own state, Mitch McConnell is the most unpopular senator in the nation.  It is also no wonder that his opponent, Ms. Grimes, is running neck and neck in the polls in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator in decades.

The Republicans, along with the Koch Brothers, are expected to spend $100 million on this single state senatorial election.  That’s how desperate they are in trying to keep this senator’s seat and to keep him as the Senate minority leader.

Being that the senator’s last statement said that they needed to “quit doing what we’ve been doing” to get the country started again.  Hopefully, the residents of Kentucky will agree and stop doing what they’ve been doing by not re-electing this man as their US Senator.  That would be the best way to get their state off on the right foot.

Copyright G.Ater  2014