Senate Majority Leader (for now) Mitch McConnell is complicated. He’s gotten a lot less complicated since that, uh, black guy was elected President a few years back, but the fact is that at one time in his career, he aspired to be just like the legendary Senator from his home state of Kentucky, Henry Clay. Clay served many roles in American government, but most famously led the Senate in a number of compromises that helped quell tensions surrounding the lead-up to the Civil War.
But Clay was complicated too — he opposed the annexation of Texas, opposed the Mexican–American War, and at times earned the ire of his own party and even sympathetic factions of the opposition. Hence the whole “compromise” thing.
Mitch, believe it or not, used to be a moderate in the very Henry Clay sense of the word. He supported abortion rights and public sector unions and any number of things a thoughtful politician might support.
But power got to Senator McConnell: His continuing reelections — he’s now at 33 years in the US Senate — proved just too easy to get used to, and so he moved to the right, where he could comfortably help oppose campaign finance reform and confirm judges who would side with his party in disputes.
And to that end, Mitch has supported the campaigns and careers of a lot of Republicans who shouldn’t have had either. Everyone knows in American government you need allies, and Mitch was not opposed to flaws on his team.
Deep flaws.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal from just a few days ago, Mitch was back to paying lip service to the compromise and moderation that jump-started his career, even saying that Trump should try and negotiate with Democrats on spending and border security, but he couldn’t quite get through the whole interview without reminding us just how long ago he sold his soul.
If you look at a map of America, there’s a lot of red. [That Roy Moore wasn’t elected to the Senate was] the Alabama mistake in 2017.”
Roy Moore, of course, was the serial pedophile and child rapist who was narrowly defeated by Doug Jones in a special election to fill the seat vacated by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he left the Senate to join the Justice Department.
If you ask us, compromises that enjoin the efforts of sex offenders are no kind of compromise at all.
Featured image via screen capture
