When someone writes a book about this moment in American history, Mitch McConnell will likely play a starring role.
He’ll be the villain, of course, the guy who embodies all that is bad about Washington.
It was the Republican from Kentucky, after all, who finally broke the U.S. Senate. Just ask Amy McGrath, the woman who hopes to drive him out of office next year. She describes McConnell as “the man who has turned Washington into something we all despise.”
Claire McCaskill, a moderate Democrat who served two terms as a U.S. senator from Missouri, offered a similar take during a recent appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“Mitch McConnell has presided over absolutely destroying Senate norms, from Merrick Garland to killing legislative debate,” she said. “The Senate is no longer what it was.”
Garland, you might recall, was the man President Barack Obama nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. McConnell, fearing a liberal takeover of the high court, came up with a new rule that said presidents shouldn’t be able to choose justices during their final year in office. He refused even to give Garland a hearing.
McConnell claims it was actually his predecessor, Democrat Harry Reid, who ruined the Senate. It was Reid, after all, who killed the filibuster on judicial appointments and thus set the stage for the majority party to shove through a president’s choices by a single vote.
McConnell, though, has taken obstructionism to a new level. He made it his mission to block every initiative Obama put forward. McConnell’s goal, he said at one point, was to make certain Obama did not win a second term.
When that failed, McConnell doubled down on his obstructive behavior, continuing his efforts even after Obama left office.
“If I’m still majority leader of the Senate after next year, none of these things are going to pass the Senate,” he said of the many proposals being touted by Democratic presidential hopefuls. “They won’t even be voted on. So think of me as the Grim Reaper, the guy who is going to make sure that socialism doesn’t land on the president’s desk.”
McConnell is also clear about the role he’ll play during the approaching impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump.
“I would anticipate we’ll have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate,” he said during an appearance on “Fox and Friends.” “I’m not impartial about this at all.”
McConnell took to the Senate floor after the House impeachment vote to talk about just how partisan the process had become.
“Let’s be clear: the House’s vote yesterday was not some neutral judgment,” he said. “It was the predetermined end of a partisan crusade.”
The whole thing was a bit much for former U.S. Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota.
“Listening to Mitch McConnell talk about the decline of bipartisanship,” he tweeted, “is like listening to Jeffrey Dahmer complain about the decline of dinner party etiquette.”
For those unfamiliar with the reference, Dahmer was a serial killer who admitted eating parts of his victims.
McConnell is no serial killer, of course, unless you count the many pieces of legislation that have gone to die on his desk.
He actually seems to enjoy playing the bad guy.
“I’m the second most despised Republican in America by the political left,” he said during that same interview on “Fox and Friends.”
McConnell’s fine with that, of course. As long as he’s unpopular only among Democrats.
Kelly Hawes is a columnist for CNHI newspapers in Indiana. Send comments to [email protected].
