Profiles in Non-courage

Mitch McConnell was elected to the United States Senate in 1984, the year Ronald Reagan won the presidency by almost 20-million votes and an electoral vote margin of 525 to 13. Mitch’s campaign slogan against Democrat Walter Dee Huddleston was “Switch to Mitch.” That should have told the nation something about the man that Kentucky would send to Congress for the next 34 years—a man who would win future elections with the catchy “Repeal and Replace.” No one likes meaningless but catchy slogans more than Republicans.

The fact that this slogan only garnered him a plurality of 5200 votes out of more than 1,8-million cast (0.04%) tells us something else about the man who would one day become Senate Majority Leader.

Mitch has been a voice in Congress through the Iran/Contra Affair, two Iraq Wars, the 9/11 attack by terrorists on the Twin Towers, the S & L debacle of 1988, and the Great Recession of 2008—all of them events occurring under Republican presidents, as well as the tax cuts of Reagan, Bush, and Trump. Don’t let anyone fool you, tax cuts help the rich more than anyone else.

He was there for the Republican’s 6-year investigations of the Clinton’s during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and the fruitless and seemingly endless investigation of Hillary Clinton for the Benghazi attack.

He was there when Obama’s administration opened the door for 15-million Americans to receive previously unavailable healthcare insurance and has spent the last decade trying to take that insurance away.

This man has been in Washington for all the big events, all the momentous decisions, all the bitter struggles. So what does he call his proudest moment?

The short answer would be the election of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Well that might be his biggest accomplishment, but his proudest moment in his own words, was looking Obama in the eye and telling him he would block his Supreme Court nominee. Not defeat Obama’s nominee, but block him. Block him by ignoring the Constitution he had sworn to defend.

Once he had done that, by declaring a sitting president a “lame duck” in his final year—something high school civics class students know is ridiculous, his next step was to again assault the Constitution by reducing confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice to a simple majority.

It worked. Gorsuch became a justice with the smallest majority (54-45) since Clarence Thomas (52-48).

So this is where “Switch to Mitch” choses to hang his hat when the subject of proudest moments come up.

Mitch is all about political gains. Ideology, not so much. In fact, his goal after Obama was elected in 2008 was to insure Obama became a one-term president. Now, that’s the goal of all opposition party leaders, but he was still the leader of the greatest legislative body in the world—the American Senate, and the Senate is there for a reason. To do something. 

The country cannot afford to take four years off because your party lost an election. Don’t tell Mitch that.

When Obama won again in 2012, Mitch double-downed and said he was willing to sit on his hands for eight years if that was what it took to show Democrats that you don’t beat Republicans and get away with it. 

In every election after Obamacare passed, we heard McConnell and fellow Republicans sell the scam they called, “Repeal and replace,” until they finally had a chance to replace it and we all learned there was no “place” in “replace.” This is a little disheartening coming from a man who once said his family “almost went broke” from his fight against polio when he was two years old.

Taking a stand for right is never an option for “Switch to Mitch.” Standing on principle is never a problem when votes are the reward for bad behavior. Mitch favored the budget-breaking tax cuts of 2017, which heavily favored the wealthy, opposed the campaign restriction enacted by the McCain-Feingold, opposed the Paris Accords because while he favors treating corporations as people, we should never think people are more important than corporations.

If Mitch knows anything, he knows where the votes are and where the money is to get those votes. 

Telling voters the truth always carries risk. Instead, tell them what they want to hear. I don’t think McConnell and Trump like each other, but they certainly understand each other. 

History has shown us that governing takes courage, winning elections doesn’t. In fact, courage can be a handicap when it comes to elections. Thank God, for Republicans that McConnell doesn’t have any.