SENATE LEADER McCONNELL IS FINDING THAT LEADERSHIP MAY NOT BE HIS STRENGTH

…Once again, this is what should be the GOP’s logo.

Senate Republicans are proving that they aren’t any better than their GOP counterparts in the House.

 

The day after the Republicans had held the House and took the Senate, a number of them took to cable TV news where they claimed that they were now going to get the people’s business done.  They also said they were going to show that the Republican Party knows how to govern and to break the Washington grid-lock.  They claimed they would be showing all of this activity in the very near future.

Well, as they have tried unsuccessfully over 50 times to repeal Obamacare, while offering nothing to replace it.  Now they keep stepping on their tongues or poking themselves in the eye, as they attempt to govern, or while trying to get the people’s business done.

Already, the new Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has brought numerous bills to be voted on to the Senate, but over and over again, there are not enough votes for getting the people’s business passed.  So it’s almost zip for most of the new majority leader’s efforts.

The latest mess in the Senate is that the individual that was nominated months ago for replacing the current US Attorney General, Eric Holder, Ms. Loretta Lynch, a black female prosecutor who is highly qualified, she has been waiting for a confirmation vote longer than the last 5 nominated attorney generals, (over 137 days).

Majority Leader McConnell, and his fellow Senate Republicans, have gotten themselves into this sticky situation by violating the first rule of extortion: “Don’t take a hostage you aren’t willing to shoot”. McConnell on a Sunday show said he wouldn’t take up the Lynch nomination until Democrats voted on a sex-trafficking bill that had previously enjoyed bipartisan support. 

 

But that was before the Senate Democrats realized that the bill included a hidden anti-abortion provision that the Republicans won’t remove

However, the Democrats have little political incentive for complying with leader McConnell’s demands.  The Dems know that if McConnell would allow the vote to be taken, Ms. Lynch already has the votes needed, (some from Republican Senators) for confirmation.  In addition, the GOP’s on-going troubles with women and minorities continues to get worse for every day McConnell delays.

I guess this is their convoluted approach for governing and doing the people’s business for you and I.

Now, I do have to say, the Democrats and the president can assume some of the blame for Ms. Lynch’s lack of a speedy confirmation.

First, the president was talked into delaying Lynch’s nomination until after the midterms.  The approval would most likely have flown right through had the president done it during the lame-duck session. Second, as it turns out, the controversial anti-abortion provision that blocks funds to perform abortions, it has been in the legislation since it was introduced last January.  It wasn’t until recently that the Democrats and the abortion rights groups realized that the Republicans had slipped the provision into the bill.  Yes, it was there all along.  So that was their major “bad” for failing to fully read the bill.

Leader McConnell just continues to show his lack of senate leadership as he continues to treat the sex trafficking bill like the House has treated Obamacare, by bringing the bill to an unsuccessful vote, time after time, after time.  The majority leader, failed to break a Democratic filibuster of the trafficking bill on a Tuesday.  He tried again with another vote on Wednesday and then did it again on Thursday.  Always with the same results.

The reality is that this stalemate could go on for many more weeks.  The reason being, the Majority Leader cannot even bring Lynch’s nomination to a vote without the unanimous consent of his caucus, which with the current Democratic filibuster, McConnell probably wouldn’t get.

In addition, right out of the gate in his new leadership role, McConnell inflamed his conservative supporters when he surrendered in the Department of Homeland Security funding battle last month.

And McConnell is getting hit from another group that he obviously hasn’t had to deal with before he assumed his new role.

Another African American woman, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) called a news conference stating that Senate Republicans are provoking a “constitutional crisis.”  At another news conference, Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) demanded that, “It’s time for the majority leader to release the hostage”.   This conference was a very flashy affair as it was surrounded by US flags and included Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and the representatives of five different women’s groups.

To top it all off, Senator Dick Durban (D-Il), the number two Democrat in the Senate, he decided to play the “race card” on the Senate floor.  First he said that the Majority Leader was forcing Ms. Lynch to “sit in the back of the bus”.  Then he added that, “It’s time for us to give Loretta Lynch an opportunity to continue to serve America, to make civil rights history”.   He then called her nomination as the first black woman to be nominated as the head of the US Justice Department a “civil rights milestone.”

Yes, this may have been pushing the envelope a bit much.  But one does have to admit that so far, the GOP is standing firm in showing that their ability to govern and get business done is mostly political rhetoric, just like their “Republican Talking Points”.

Copyright G.Ater  2015