Moscow Mitch McConnell

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "McConnell focuses ‘100 percent’ on blocking Biden — and zero percent on America"

Quote

It has long been obvious that Mitch McConnell puts party before country, but this week he actually admitted it.

The Senate minority leader told Republican colleagues that they should oppose the creation of a Jan. 6 commission, no matter how it is structured, because it “could hurt the party’s midterm election message,” as Politico’s Burgess Everett reported.

And so, as early as Thursday, McConnell will use the filibuster to thwart a bipartisan effort to prevent further attacks on the U.S. government by domestic terrorists — because he thinks it’s good politics for Republicans.

“That is extremely frustrating and disturbing,” Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), the Democrat working hardest to protect the minority’s filibuster rights, told reporters. “There’s a time when you rise above [politics], and I’m hoping that this would be the time that he would do that. I guess, from what I am hearing, he hasn’t.”

Manchin has every right to be disturbed. But he shouldn’t be surprised.

McConnell, asked this month about the ouster of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from GOP leadership, and whether he was concerned that many Republicans believe Donald Trump’s election lie, replied, twice: “One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.” True to his word, McConnell has blocked everything — even if it means undercutting Republican negotiators.

In addition to denouncing the Jan. 6 commission bill, negotiated by the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, McConnell undercut Tim Scott (S.C.), the lone Black Republican in the Senate and McConnell’s designee to negotiate policing legislation. McConnell upended negotiations by announcing opposition to any bill that doesn’t preserve qualified immunity for police.

This week, McConnell disrupted progress on a broadly bipartisan bill designed to improve American technological competitiveness against China. Even though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had followed “regular order” and allowed Republicans to amend the bill, McConnell threatened to filibuster the bill if Democrats didn’t slow the process further. On Monday, he demanded “a number of further votes on important amendments before there would be any attempt to shut off debate.”

Why? Because unrelenting obstruction is McConnell’s only way to placate the GOP base in the face of Trump’s attacks. The former president has called McConnell, among other things, a “dumb son of a bitch,” a “dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack,” “gutless and clueless,” “weak and pathetic,” a “stone-cold loser,” and a leader Republicans “should change.” The attacks must be rattling McConnell, for he has been unusually clumsy in his appeals to the Trumpian base.

He earned an extraordinary rebuke from the University of Louisville (the Kentuckian’s alma mater and home to the McConnell Center) when he declared that it was an “exotic notion” to believe that 1619 — the year in which slaves arrived in the American colonies — is among “the most important dates in American history.” Before that, McConnell threatened “serious consequences” for “woke” corporations that moved business from Georgia because of the state’s discriminatory new voting restrictions.

On the infrastructure bill, he and his Republican colleagues are using the same techniques they used to try to derail the covid-relief legislation earlier this year: suggesting that Biden is a marionette manipulated by his staff. It’s just another way of planting the notion that Biden is mentally unfit.

In February, McConnell suggested that Biden was prevented by his staff from negotiating. “Our members who were in the meeting felt that the president seemed more interested in that than his staff did,” McConnell said. Republicans referred to Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, as “Prime Minister Klain” and “the guy behind the curtain,” and they suggested that Biden had his wings clipped by economic adviser Brian Deese.

Now they’re suggesting that aides are manipulating Biden on infrastructure. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 GOP leader under McConnell, said Tuesday that the White House staff is “not as inclined to make a deal as the president is.”

And longtime McConnell adviser Josh Holmes claimed Tuesday that White House “staff treats Biden as though he’s an invalid who just wanders into a meeting and knows not what he speaks.”

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) picked up the Biden-as-puppet theme Wednesday, suggesting Biden backed Republicans’ $1 trillion infrastructure proposal — until staff overruled him. “We went backwards very significantly when the staff came in with a much, much higher number than what I thought the president agreed to,” he said on CNBC.

The insulting implication that Biden is not in control, coming from his longtime Senate colleagues, would naturally anger Biden. So why try to undercut Biden in such a personal way? To poison the well as negotiators make a rare attempt at bipartisanship.

Maybe Manchin will be disturbed by this, too. He is still trying to negotiate on infrastructure, and to get 10 Republicans to support a Jan. 6 commission and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. More power to him. But sooner or later, he’ll have to conclude that there’s no negotiating when McConnell has a 100 percent focus on obstruction.

 

[Alisamer]

Anyone else who actively refused to do their job, and actively blocked others from doing their jobs, would be fired immediately. I don't get why these people get paid so much to basically stamp their feet and say "NO!" like a toddler any time someone on the other side tries to get anything done. Or more importantly, why they keep getting re-elected.

And TBH? Every time one of these threads about some old dude gets bumped my brain goes "did he die?"

[Howl]

39 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

And TBH? Every time one of these threads about some old dude gets bumped my brain goes "did he die?"

Damn, I worry about this on both sides of the aisle and in both Houses of Congress!  

I'd read a month or two ago that Moscow Mitch was ready to resign over health issues, but his home state was reworking the state constitution to make sure his successor could only be a Republican and he had to make sure that was a fait accompli first. 

[Cartmann99]

 

[fraurosena]

7 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

 

What a ridiculous attempt at whitewashing voter suppression laws. 

[Audrey2]

37 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

What a ridiculous attempt at whitewashing voter suppression laws. 

Truthfully, with McConnell did you expect anything besides cowardice, confusion, and corruption?

[GreyhoundFan]

I know it’s not the kind way, but every time I see this thread with new entries, I turn on MSNBC to see if he’s passed away. 

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I know it’s not the kind way, but every time I see this thread with new entries, I turn on MSNBC to see if he’s passed away. 

Well, it's not that weird of a thought. He's not a spring chicken by any stretch of the imagination and after seeing his horribly blackened hands last year, it's pretty clear he's not quite in the peak of health either. If he were to pass, it wouldn't be that surprising.

 

[Cartmann99]

11 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Well, it's not that weird of a thought. He's not a spring chicken by any stretch of the imagination and after seeing his horribly blackened hands last year, it's pretty clear he's not quite in the peak of health either. If he were to pass, it wouldn't be that surprising.

I saw Michael J. Fox trending on Twitter this morning and feared the worst. I was relieved to discover that today is his 60th birthday.

[GreyhoundFan]

His voice makes me almost as ragey as the former guy's:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

If he could, he'd stop a Democrat from nominating a SCOTUS justice one hour following inauguration, saying it's too close to the next election. He's such an asshole.

[GreyhoundFan]

I truly despise this ass:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I wish he'd just go the hell away:

 

[JordynDarby5]

20 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I wish he'd just go the hell away:

 

So do I.

[WiseGirl]

 

[fraurosena]

6 minutes ago, WiseGirl said:

 

Correction, he'll stop anything from passing, period. With the exception of the tax cut for the rich, he didn't pass anything the past four years while the repugs were in power either.

[Alisamer]

I'm torn between "Yes! Let's replace "bitch" with "Mitch"! Less sexist and works all the time!" and "Ugh let's not ever utter that monster's name again, if we can help it."

I have never seen someone work so determinedly at doing nothing.

[smittykins]

I don’t even think he should be associated with turtles.  I like turtles. ?

Edited June 29, 2021 by smittykins

[WiseGirl]

Kentucky he admits to voting against what benefits your state. Pay attention. 

 

[Audrey2]

What also irks me is that you can hear McConnell brag that their state received more money than what they sent in last year. 

[Cartmann99]

Good luck with that.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This sounds great, but #MoscowMitch is incapable of shame and is seemingly made of Teflon. "Biden’s challenge to Mitch McConnell: Go ahead, burn the place down"

Quote

On Monday, President Biden shocked the political world by refusing to promise that the battle over the debt limit will be resolved without the United States defaulting on its debts, which would unleash economic calamity.

“No, I can’t,” Biden said, when asked whether he could guarantee resolution. “That’s up to Mitch McConnell.”

It’s anybody’s guess whether this effort by Democrats to ratchet up pressure on the Senate Minority Leader will actually work. McConnell (R-Ky.) is vowing to continue filibustering Democratic efforts to suspend the debt limit and avoid catastrophe.

But here’s one thing we can say right now: Biden’s declaration sets up the possibility for an endgame to all this that Republicans might not have anticipated. If this continues, it will soon become overwhelmingly clear that Republicans face a stark choice: Either they drop their filibuster, or we default.

McConnell has benefited overwhelmingly from the failure of media coverage to convey with real clarity precisely what Republicans are doing here. Oozing with bad faith, McConnell keeps insisting he just wants Democrats to raise the debt limit by themselves, offering this idea as though it’s the most reasonable notion in the world, packaged with his usual smarmy smirk.

It’s nonsense, of course. The idea that it’s solely Democrats’ responsibility to deal with the debt limit when they control Washington is an invented rule. Democrats and Republicans repeatedly suspended the debt limit under the last GOP president, when much current debt was racked up (and the debt limit is only about covering obligations already incurred).

More to the point, Republicans are filibustering Democratic efforts to suspend the debt limit. They’re actively blocking Democrats from doing what McConnell himself says he wants — that is, for Democrats to deal with this alone. He’s doing this to force Democrats to avert catastrophe in the reconciliation process, to disrupt their push for a multitrillion-dollar social policy bill.

Democrats are refusing to use reconciliation on the debt limit, and Biden’s new comments indicate that they appear determined to hold to this course. As Biden argued, if Republicans are not willing to help deal with the problem, they must at least drop their filibuster and let Democrats deal with it.

“They need to stop playing Russian roulette with the U.S. economy,” Biden said, which appears to mean he’s going to try to force them to relent.

It’s possible Democrats might back down, by, say, raising the debt limit themselves through reconciliation (another option that they should take seriously would be to try to use that process to nullify it entirely). But Democrats are running out of room to put that into effect by Oct. 18, which might be the deadline.

And so, if Democrats hold firm, we could soon find ourselves in a situation in which Democrats have no option of using reconciliation anymore.

If so, at that point, the choice for Republicans will be incredibly stark: Either they stop filibustering, or we default. All the game-playing will fall by the wayside. No matter how many times McConnell disingenuously pretends he only wants Democrats to handle this themselves while Republicans block this from happening, and no matter how many times McConnell is credulously portrayed as a savvy operator for doing so, as the days tick down to Armageddon, that will be his choice.

If Republicans continue regardless, Democrats may in turn have no choice but to carve out an exception to the filibuster to deal with the debt limit themselves. That might open the door for more carve-outs on the filibuster later.

Indeed, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) just floated exactly this possibility:

 

[smittykins]

I’m old enough to remember when St. Reagan was called “The Teflon President.”

[GreyhoundFan]

Normally I don't like to wish people ill, but I wouldn't shed a single tear if MoscowMitch developed some issue that left him unable to speak or continue as a senator.

 

[fraurosena]

57 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Normally I don't like to wish people ill, but I wouldn't shed a single tear if MoscowMitch developed some issue that left him unable to speak or continue as a senator.

 

Asshat coughed into his right hand... way to go, MoscowMitch. Hope nobody nice shook that hand later.