MITCH McCONNELL FREQUENTLY CHANGES VIEWS TO FIT THE MOMENT

…Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell

No man has done more in recent years, than Mitch McConnell, to undermine the functioning of the US government.

Many of you know that one of my favorite OpEd writers at The Post is Dana Milbank.

Having followed Mr. Milbank for years, his knowledge, humor and inventive writings have many times become both visionary and prescient of the things to come.

Last week he wrote a pretty amazing article and the subject was our current Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell.

And what he had to say about the Majority Leader was very profound and highly negative about this GOP leaders legacy and his role in his political party.

Back in 2013, when the majority Leader was a Democrat, the Minority Leader McConnell said the following of the Democrats when they pushed through a filibuster change for lesser judge’s nominations.

“Breaking the rules to change the rules is un-American. I just hope the majority leader thinks about his legacy, the future of his party, and, most importantly, the future of our country before he acts.”

Sounds pretty good as to properly following the long-time Senate rules.  But McConnell had  neglected to add, that this was done because the Republican Senators were holding up all of President Obama's judge nominations under McConnell's instructions.

As of later becoming the Majority Leader, McConnell did a 180° turn on the same topic as he went from the institutional defender of the filibuster, to the man who destroyed it.  

McConnell has frequently shifted his views to suit the needs of the moment, just as Mr. Trump does in the White House on a daily basis.  In this case, McConnell was correct back in 2013, and what he just did this last week was even more ruinous than what he accused the Democrats of doing back then.

But as to McConnell’s legacy, Milbank quoted Chuck Schumer, the Minority Leader’s comment that, “No majority leader wants written on his tombstone that he presided over the end of the Senate.”

But now, Mr. Milbank is saying that: “By rights, McConnell’s tombstone should say that he presided over the end of the Senate. And I’d add a second line: ‘He broke America.’ No man has done more in recent years to undermine the functioning of US government. His has been the epitome of unprincipled leadership, the triumph of tactics in service of short-term power.”

Wow, that’s a pretty heavy statement about one of the most powerful men in Washington.

But Milbank continued with: “After McConnell justified his filibuster-ending ‘nuclear option’ by saying it would be beneficial for the Senate, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) had said: “Whoever says that is a stupid idiot.”  McConnell is no idiot. He is a clever man who does what works for him in the moment, consequences be damned.”

However, back in 1994, McConnell had lamented to the conservative Heritage Foundation that Republicans hadn’t used the filibuster enough.  Per McConnell: “I am a proud guardian of gridlock. I think gridlock is making a big comeback in the country.”

So, one can see why Mr. Milbank has made these statement about the current Senate Majority Leader.

Milbank continued: “For the next quarter-century, he [McConnell] made sure of it. Back then he was fighting all attempts at campaign-finance reform and spending limits, championing disclosure of contributions as the antidote. But when the Supreme Court allowed unlimited “dark money” in campaigns without disclosure, McConnell reversed course and has fought all attempts to enact disclosure.”

We all also remember some of the mis-statements that came from Mr. McConnell back in 2010 such as: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”  And when he said this, as it was at the beginning of his party’s Great Recession, he also said that: ”No matter, even if what the new Democratic president wanted to do, was the right idea for everyone, we will fight against it to the end.”

ProPublica’s Alec MacGillis, author of a McConnell biography, “The Cynic,” reports that the former Republican senator, Robert Bennett’s, account of another item of what McConnell told fellow Republicans after Obama’s election: “Mitch said, ‘We have a new president with an approval rating in the 70% area. We do not take him on frontally. We find issues where we can win, and we begin to take him down, one issue at a time. We create an inventory of losses, so it’s Obama lost on this, and Obama lost on that.’ ”

                     

And McConnell did exactly that, and it was the beginning of what is now the cause of a 19% Congressional Approval Rating.  Because of McConnell’s not compromising on anything the Democrats wanted to do, virtually nothing big has been done in the US Congress for years.  By 2013, for example, 79 of Obama’s nominees had been blocked by filibusters, compared with 68 in the entire previous history of the Republic.  “Thank you Mr. McConnell”.

After Justice Antonin Scalia’s death was confirmed, it took McConnell less than an one hour to say that Scalia’s vacancy should be filled by the next president, not President Obama.  He called keeping Obama’s nominee off the court for 10 months, “one of my proudest moments.”

This is what Milbank wrote about today’s McConnell and his dealings with President Trump: “While other Republicans have at times been willing to criticize President Trump’s outrages, McConnell has been conspicuously quiescent. Although his predecessors at least attempted collegiality, McConnell practices no such niceties.  But most characteristic of McConnell is his tendency to shift his views to suit current exigencies i.e.: on the minimum wage, withdrawal from Iraq, earmarks, abortion, labor and civil rights.  And his adroitness at gumming up the works: forcing clerks to spend hours reading a bill aloud on the floor; opposing immigration legislation he had encouraged; asking for a vote on a debt-ceiling proposal and then trying to filibuster it; urging the Obama administration to support a bipartisan debt commission and then he voted against it.”

In the current cycle of partisan escalation, it’s only a matter of time before the filibuster is abolished for all legislation, that kills the tradition of unlimited debate in the Senate which dates back to 1789.  The Founders did this so minority rights would be respected and a consensus could be formed.  Mitch McConnell is undoing all of this.

Two years ago, when a Democrat was in the White House, McConnell said he would only abolish filibusters of Supreme Court justices if there were 67 votes for such a change. This week, he employed a maneuver to do it with only 51 votes. Once again, it suited McConnell’s momentary needs, but the damage will remain long after McConnell’s tombstone is engraved.

Mitch McConnell is seriously trying to destroy the Senate, all by himself.  I think Mr. Milbank is correct that Senate Majority Leader McConnell, along with our current US President, together they will cause more damage that will take generations to un-do, after these two yahoo’s are finally done.

Copyright G. Ater  2018