This is an excellent article on Kentucky's shame - Mitch McConnell. This man is as nasty and smarmy as anything Norquist or Gingrich or Dead Eye or KKKarl could ever envision. Washington Monthly does a great job of pulling McConnell out from under the rock he hides out to do his dirty work. Very interesting article.
Meet the New BossQuietly, Senate Republicans have already chosen Mitch McConnell as their next leader—because Congress just isn’t partisan enough.By Zachary Roth & Cliff Schecter
One of the Senate’s quirkier traditions was inaugurated in the late 1990s by then-Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.). On certain summer Thursdays, Lott decreed, members should leave their customary dark blue and gray suits at home and, as a tribute to southern fashion, instead conduct the people’s business in pale blue seersucker. Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a fellow southerner and Lott’s successor as leader, has kept the ritual alive. Lawmakers no doubt welcome the chance to don a cooler fabric in the sweltering Washington heat, but the style doesn’t always produce the best optics: On a Thursday in mid-June, many of the Republicans who gathered to discuss the situation in Iraq—where the American death toll had that day hit 2,500—looked less like U.S. senators gravely weighing issues of war and peace, and more like Pat Boone.
But in their suggestion of a party dangerously out of touch with popular sentiment, the outfits were, perhaps, appropriate. Over the previous few weeks, positions on Iraq had begun to harden in a way that left the GOP politically vulnerable. Thanks to pressure from the White House and a short-lived uptick in support for the war in the wake of the killing of the Jihadist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, House Republicans were rapidly lining up behind a resolution affirming support for President Bush’s “stay-the-course” approach. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats were unifying behind a resolution of their own, backed by leadership, calling for troop withdrawals to begin this year. With the public already favoring a pullout and growing only more frustrated with the war effort every day, the coming clash between these two positions looked likely to favor Democrats.
The party was not in total agreement, however. Earlier that week, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) had filed a sweeping amendment to a defense bill requiring all U.S. troops to be pulled out of Iraq by July 2007. Knowing his measure would attract little support as written, and hoping to maintain a unified Democratic message, Kerry had informed Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), who was managing the defense bill, that he was not yet ready to offer it for a vote. Warner agreed to give Kerry more time, then left the Capitol building to attend a memorial service at the Pentagon for victims of 9/11.
Soon afterwards, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate number two, rose to speak, his light blue tie elegantly setting off the pinstripes. A pale, graying, and somewhat slight man of 64, McConnell looks more like a financial planner than a politician. He has an unblinking, vaguely android-like stare and gives the impression, even when speaking, of wanting to avoid being noticed. But today, he could not keep a hint of a smile from flickering across his normally impassive features. “Colleagues on the other side have said they were going to offer an amendment to advocate withdrawal by the end of the year,” he reminded the chamber. “Let’s have that debate.” With that, McConnell took Kerry’s measure, scratched out the Democrat’s name, replaced it with his own, and offered it for a vote.
The move seemed to take even McConnell’s Republican colleagues by surprise. Frist, who had just arrived on the floor—white spats complementing the seersucker—referred to the “Kerry amendment,” and appeared momentarily confused when told that the pending measure was now, in fact, the McConnell amendment. Even C-SPAN was fooled, informing viewers in an on-screen graphic that the Senate was considering the Kerry amendment. Whatever its name, the measure was rejected by a vote of 93-6. Democrats denounced what Kerry called a “fictitious vote,” and even Warner tried to distance himself from McConnell’s maneuver, informing his colleagues that it had been carried out in his absence.
(snip)
If Republicans do hold onto the Senate—and they might not—McConnell will likely have a smaller majority than Frist has enjoyed. A leader hoping to get legislation passed would probably respond by being more conciliatory toward the minority—but Republicans didn’t pick McConnell because of his talent for conciliation. “I think he’ll be more likely to pick a fight,” says the Heritage Foundation’s Darling. With a confrontational Republican leader, a narrow Senate majority, and an unpopular, lame duck president, the next two years don’t figure to see much landmark legislation passed. Instead, if the past is any guide, Majority Leader McConnell will focus only on measures that support Republican power or drive a wedge between Democrats, and will do everything possible to keep campaign dollars flowing to the GOP. But if and when that happens, don’t blame McConnell. He’ll only be doing what he was elected to do.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0610.roth.html 
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
